The English Edition of this book (translated from the author's
original French edition) published October, 1987 - by theInstitute for Historical Review:
(IHR),
18221/2, Newport Boulevard, Suite 191, Costa Mesa,
California 92627 - USA,
ISBN 0-939484-25-0) - Published on the Net byradioislam.org, Januari
2008

"More than 70010 of
Communist leaders in Russia were Jews and practically all the
Communist bosses who would appear across Europe in the following
weeks would also be Jews."CHAPTER XLIV, The Armistice: a
Fraud

Introduction

For most Americans the globe-girdling catastrophe that we
call the Second World War is now a matter neither of
personal experience nor of memory, but of wood pulp and celluloid, books and films.
Larger still is the majority for whom the cataclysmic First
World War - once spoken of as "The Great War" - is ancient
history, an antic prelude to what those who participated in
it sometimes like to call "The Big One." For most of us,
perhaps, the two wars compare as do contrasting movies from
the two eras. Our image of the First World War is brief,
grainy, silent, with black-and-white, herky-jerky doughboys
"going over the top"; we picture the Second as panoramic,
technicolor, reverberating with stereophonic sound and fury,
armadas of ships and planes and tanks sweeping forward to
destiny.

A further disparity may be found in the popular historical
and political assessment, such as it is, of the two wars.
The majority of Americans doubtless still believes that the
key to the Second World War is a simple one: a.demonic
megalomaniac, Adolf Hitler, rose up to lead Germany to world
domination and instead led his people to well-deserved ruin.
Yet the view of the First World War held by the Americans of
today, it is safe to say, is rather more tepid than the
white-hot feelings of many of their grandparents in 1917,
when "100-per-cent Americans" agitated to "Hang the Kaiser!"
and mobs sacked German newspaper offices and presses in the
worst outbreak of ethnic bigotry in our country's history.
For the contemporary generation the origins and course of
the First World War are murky and obscure. Even the terrible
hecatombs of the Western Front have faded into oblivion, and
Kaiser Bill and his spike-helmeted Huns have long since been
superseded by the Fuehrer and his goose-stepping myrmidons.

The evident lack of interest of even the literate American
public in their country's first "famous victory" of this
century has been mirrored to a certain extent by the
professional historians of the Left-Liberal Establishment,
which of course holds sway in the colleges and universities
of not only American but the entire Western world. The
professors have their reasons, however. The more competent
among them are aware that shortly after the First World War,
in a signal achievement of historical scholarship, Revisionist writers in this country and in
Europe unmasked the mendacious propaganda disseminated by
the British, French, Tsarist Russian, and American
governments.

Professors such as Sidney Bradshaw Fay, Max Montgelas,
Georges Demartial, and the incomparable Harry Elmer Barnes
overthrew the historiographical and moral underpinnings of
the verdict expressed in Article 231 of the onerous Treaty
of Versailles, that Germany and her allies had imposed an
aggressive war on the Triple Entente and thus bore all
responsibility for the calamity. The Englishman Arthur
Ponsonby demonstrated just as convincingly that the atrocity
charges against the Germans, including such canards as a
"cadaver factory" for soap and the like from the corpses of
fallen German soldiers, were manufactured and spread by
teams of talented fabricators, not a few of them, like
Arnold Toynbee, reputable men of scholarship ostensibly
dedicated to the search for truth.

The modern school of historical obfuscators, propagandists
more than scholars, and thus cognizant of the need for a
consistent pattern of German "guilt" and "aggression"
throughout this century, long ago undertook to roll back and
suppress the achievements of Revisionist scholarship on the
origins of the First World War. Inspired by the German
renegade Fritz Fischer, whose Griff nach der Weltmacht
(Germany's Bid for World Power) (1961), they hailed with
hysterical relief, they have dismissed with sovereign
disdain the notion that powers such as France, the British
Empire, Tsarist Russia, or Serbia might have been motivated
by aggressive designs. The professors have employed a second
sleight-of-hand trick against Revisionist findings. It has
been their tactic to separate quite artificially the origins
and course of the war from its result, the Paris peace
treaties, above all that of Versailles, and from the
ineluctable consequences which flowed from that result. For
them, and for their public of university students and
educated laymen, Versailles was an entirely justified
consequence of the war, and Adolf Hitler sprang up either as
a manifestation of the German nation's twisted "id" (Freud
and his numerous epigoni and camp followers) or the puppet
of the "Ruhr barons" (the Marxists), propelled along his way
by something these professors are always careful to refer to
as the "stab-in-the-back legend."

Our leftist educators have also been adept at evading an
honest evaluation of the Red terror which swept across
Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of the German
collapse, although they have wept copious tears behind their
pink spectacles over the crushing of Communist juntas in
Bavaria, Berlin, and Budapest. The deliberate failure of the
professors to make sense of the cataclysmic events of
1914-1920 in Europe has now been redressed, however, by a
man of both learning and action, a confidante of statesmen
and a worthy comrade of heroes: the Belgian exile Leon
Degrelle.

Leon Degrelle, who was born in 1906 in the sleepy little
town of Bouillon, now a backwater in Belgium's Luxembourg province, but once
the seat of Godefroy de Bouillon, first Crusader king of
Jerusalem, speaks in a voice few Americans will be familiar
with. French-speaking, Catholic, European with a
continental, not an insular, perspective, the man who nearly
overturned his country's corrupt power elite in the 1930's
thinks in a perspective alien to our (comparatively recent)
intellectual heritage of pragmatism, positivism, and
unbounded faith in the inevitability of "progress." Before
all a man of action, Degrelle is in a tradition of vitalism,
combining an inborn elan and chivalry with a hard-eyed,
instinctual grasp of the calculus that determines politics -
activity in relation to power - today foreign, for the most
part, to the "Anglo-Saxon" nations.

It was precisely Degrelle's will to heroic action in the
defense of Europe and its values that led him to raise a
volunteer force of his French-speaking countrymen, many of
them followers of his pre-war Rexist political movement, and
to ally with his country's conqueror, Adolf Hitler, in a
European crusade against Communism and Communism's citadel,
the Soviet Union. Degrelle, who has matchlessly recounted
his role in that struggle (Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS
on the Eastern Front, Institute for Historical Review,
Torrance, CA, 1985), began the project to which this volume
is the introduction in his late seventies. From the vantage
point offered by decades of reflection in his Spanish exile,
the former charismatic political leader and highly decorated
combat veteran has undertaken nothing less than the
thorough, searching, and (insofar as possible) objective
account of the character and career of the man who once told
him, "If I had a son, I would want him to be like you":
Adolf Hitler.

Those inclined to dismiss Degrelle's objectivity in examing
the life of his commander-in-chief with a supercilious sneer
will shortly have the mandatory for Establishment scholars
on so much as mentioning the dread name. Indeed, ample
material for comparison already exists in the fawning name.
Indeed, ample material for comparison already exists in the
fawning biographical homages offered to Roosevelt and
Churchill by their one-time courtiers and authorized
hagiographers, not to mention the slavish panegyrics offered
the Western leaders' ally and boon companion, Stalin, by his
sycophants (not a few of them residents and citizens of the
Western "democracies").

There are those readers who will fault this first volume of
Degrelle's ambitious project, which demonstrates the moral
and intellectual bankruptcy of the bourgeois leadership of
the West and their unavoidable responsibility for the rise
of Hitler. Some will object that it might have been more
scholarly, while others will quibble that it ought to have
given recognition to more recent trends in the
historiography of the First World War. Such criticisms miss
the point of Degrelle's work, to reach the broadest
interested and intelligent public with an approach the
French have styled haute vulgarisation, which is to say, popularization
of a high order.

Indeed Hitler: Born at Versailles, in encompassing the
turbulent years 1914-1920, boasts a thematic unity that few
but Degrelle could have brought to the period. For in
chronicling the shady plots and complots of the European
regimes before the war, the awful bloodbaths of the Western
and Eastern fronts, and the fall of empires and the rise of
Communism after the war, Degrelle is telling of the collapse
of 19th-century Europe - its economic liberalism, its
parliamentary democracy, its self-satisfied imperialism, its
irrational faith in reason and progress.

He is, furthermore, hammering mercilessly at the puny
successors of the Poincarés, the Lloyd Georges, and the
Wilsons, the present-day "liberals" and "conservatives" who
dominate in the governments and the academies and the media:
skewering their baneful lies one by one.

Degrelle knows that there is little that is more
contemptible than the posturing of our academics, who snivel
their love of peace at every instance where it means supine
acquiescence in the latest advance of Communism or of
atavistic savagery under the banner of "self-determination"
or some other such transparent lie, but who dilate with
sanguinary enthusiasm over the "necessity" of the blood
baths that marked the two world wars of this century. How
the professors and the publicists love to chide Chamberlain
and Daladier, the British and French leaders at Munich in
1938, for their "appeasement," in attempting to stave off
yet another fratricidal war! Perhaps only a combat-hardened
veteran like Degrelle, on intimate terms with the horrors of
war, can be a true man of peace.

It is Degrelle's passionate desire for a Europe, and a West,
united above the nationalistic prides and rancors of the
past, which leads him to what for many Revisonists on both
sides of the Atlantic will regard as his most controversial
stance: his firm and sometimes strident condemnation of the
balance-of-power policy of the British Empire. The reader
should bear in mind that Degrelle's hostility is aimed not
at the English, Scottish, or Welsh nations, but at the
governments that have made British policy during this
century, with such catastrophic results not only for the
West, but for the people of Britain as well.

In any case this panoramic introduction to the life and
times of Adolf Hitler, the key figure of this century, is a
grand beginning to a project worthy of Degrelle, the Belgian
who sought the Golden Fleece as the Caucasus in the service
of his nation and his culture nearly fifty years ago.

Theodore J. O'KeefeJune, 1987

Author's Preface

An assassination which might have remained no more than an
outra- geous incident in the history of terrorism has
instead had a decisive and disastrous impact on the
twentieth century. It provoked the "Great War" of 1914-1918; made possible the October Revolution of
the Soviets in 1917; enabled Hitler's rise to power in 1933
and subsequently a Second World War; and above all, the
confrontation of the two contemporary giants, the U.S.S.R.
and the United States, with, as its issue sooner or later, a
devastating Third World War.What seemed at first a transient, if major, news story
- the
murder of Austria-Hungary's Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his
wife at Sarajevo in Bosnia on June 28, 1914 - would in
several days be revealed as the fruit of a convoluted
political plot. At first the affair seemed limited to
Austria and Serbia, notoriously quarrelsome neighbors. But
at the end of four weeks, it was clear that the Serbs, at
the threshold of the Balkans, had been cunningly manipulated
by Pan-Slavists in the imperial Russian court.For its part, the Austrian government was joined to Germany
by a political and military alliance. In turn, the Russian
government was linked by a military treaty to the rulers of
France, desperate to regain Alsace- Lorraine from Germany,
which had annexed those provinces in 1871. Furthermore, the
British establishment, incensed at the rise of Germany's
economic power and the expansion of its fleet, had moved
ever closer to France and its recent rival, Russia, in the
previous few years. The stage was thus set for a cataclysm
which would shake the White world with unprecedented fury.Within five weeks, thanks to several bullets fired by a
nonentity in a sleepy Balkan town, the great powers of
Europe would be at each other's throats. Then, with neither
the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia nor the
Dual Alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary able to force
the other to yield, the warring nations would find no other
solution but to drag nineteen other countries into the
slaughter. By virtue of promises as false as they were
contradictory, the competing sides would offer the selfsame
spoils of war in secret compacts with two and sometimes
three different nations. Millions of people would be
auctioned off, without their knowledge or consent, as booty for their nations'
bitterest rivals.To arouse anti-German hatred to a fever pitch, the powers of
the Entente charged the Germans with the most shameful
atrocities, stirring up a vengeful fury which, together with
the short-sighted greed and stupidity of the victors, would
result in the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty, which
crushed Europe's foremost power, Germany, beneath a burden
of shame and reparations, which amputated vital territories
from the body of the nation, and rendered it defenseless
against enemies within and without, at length was successful
only in provoking a new and inevitable European war.The intelligent minds of Europe foresaw the consequences of
this treaty even before it was imposed. One of the principal
negotiators, Britain's David Lloyd George, warned the treaty
makers at Paris in 1919: "If peace is made under these
conditions, it will be the source of a new war." And so it
was, for without the Treaty of Versailles the rise of an
unknown infantryman, born in Austria and hardened on the
Western Front to absolute power in Germany would have been
an impossibility. Adolf Hitler came into the world at
Braunau-am-Inn, but politically he was born at Versailles.June 29, 1919, the day the treaty was signed, not only ended
the First World War - it began the Second.

Ambush at Sarajevo

CHAPTER I

Black Hand In Sarajevo

The twenty-eighth of June, 1914, was a warm and sunny day
all across Europe. Few could have suspected that this
outwardly tranquil summer day would be written in blood on the calendar of history,
and that this fateful June day would be the precursor of so
many blood-red June days for Europe in this century, from
the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 to
the surrender of France in 1940 to the "D-Day" landings of
1944 to the dismantling of the old European order at Potsdam
in June 1945.Nowhere on that fateful day did the sun's rays beat down
more implacably than at Sarajevo, a sleepy Balkan town in
Bosnia. The former seat of a province of the Ottoman empire,
it was oriental in appearance, with white-minareted mosques
towering over the winding streets of the bazaar.
Administered by the Austro-Hungarian Empire since 1878,
annexed outright in 1908, it was a place where little out of
the ordinary ever took place.On this day, however, the most important man in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was
visiting. He was the heir to the Habsburg throne on which
the ancient Franz Joseph sat, who, at eighty-six, after
sixty-six years of rule, had been drained by illness and
care. The archduke was a robust man, his breast jingling
with medals, his helmet richly plumed, an ardent hunter who
had filled the palaces and hunting lodges of Europe with his
antlered trophies.The heir had come to Sarajevo in his capacity as
commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian army, to observe
maneuvers which were being carried out several miles away.
Franz Ferdinand and his consort, Sophie, rode along the quay
beside Sarajevo's Miljach River virtually unprotected on
their way to the town hall. Their four-car procession was
barely underway when a young terrorist aimed a bomb at the
archduke.The bomb glanced off the back of the archduke's car and
exploded beneath the following vehicle, injuring two
officers, one of whom was rushed to a nearby hospital. Franz
Ferdinand and his wife, shaken but unhurt, continued on to
the town hall, where the archduke angrily rebuked the mayor
for his city's lack of hospitality. Then the little
motorcade set off for the hospital in which the wounded
young officer was being treated.

The lead car, in which the mayor sat, made a wrong turn, and
the archduke's car followed it. The military governor of
Bosnia, General Potiorek, alertly signaled the driver to
back up and return to the planned route. As the driver
braked, a young man stepped forth, took careful aim, and
fired two shots into the open car.One shot struck Franz Ferdinand in the neck. The other hit
his wife Sophie, the Dutchess of Hohenberg, in the stomach.
As she slumped against her husband, his green tunic covered
with blood, he murmured, "Sophie, live for our children."
The couple died within minutes after the attack.

***

The news of his nephew and heir's assassination was received
by Emperor Franz Josef at his palace in Vienna, the Hofburg,
with unseemly coolness. The old man bore a grudge against
Franz Ferdinand, perhaps partially because the archduke had
succeeded Franz Josef's own son, Rudolf, who died in a
tragic dual suicide with his lover, Marie Vetsera, in the
royal hunting lodge at Mayerling twenty-five years before.More important, Franz Ferdinand's wife Sophie, although a
countess from an old Czech family, was far inferior in blood
and rank to the standards prescribed by custom and law for a
Habsburg empress. When Franz Ferdinand married her in 1900,
he was forced to renounce all possibility of either his wife
or their future children assuming the Habsburg throne.A morganatic marriage-unforgivable crime in the monarchical
profession! To be sure, crowned heads are allowed mistresses
and even bastards, perfectly permissible "amorous
adventures." But if a Rudolf of Habsburg, a Franz Ferdinand,
an Edward VIII of England, or a Leopold III, King of the
Belgians, does not limit his choice to the princely game
preserve of obligatory spouses, let him beware!So it was that at the state funeral for Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and his wife in Vienna, the slain couple rode
apart, in separate hearses, the Archduke's a majestic affair
decked in black plumes and drawn with black horses, trailed
by a procession of dignitaries of state and court, Sophie's
following behind, notably less magnificent. At the cathedral
her coffin was laid out one step below that of her husband.
In lieu of a crown, the coffin of the Archduke's wife was
decked by the fan of a mere court lady. The old man was
still ashamed of his nephew's consort, even in death.

Franz Josef had another reason for not being overly
perturbed at his heir's violent passing. The archduke's
political ideas and his notions for reforming the empire were anathema to the old monarch, who
with each passing year grew ever more conservative.In 1867 Franz Josef had been forced by circumstances
(Austria's defeat by Prussia the year before) to grant the
Hungarians an almost equal role in what became the dual
monarchy of Austria-Hungary. In the following decades the
Slays subject to Habsburg rule had begun to clamor for
increased recognition, and Franz Ferdinand was known to be
sympathetic to them, perhaps even willing to go so far as to
institute a "trial," or three- way, monarchy.To the reactionary Franz Josef, as well as to the proud
Magyars, jealous of their prerogatives, trialism posed a
grave threat to the empire. There were forces beyond the
borders of the empire who found the archduke's ideas
threatening as well.Serbia across the Danube from Austria-Hungary, was the most
vigorous and aggressive of the Balkan countries. Subject to
the rule of the Ottoman Turks for centuries, many of their
people converts to Islam, the Balkan lands-Serbia, Bulgaria,
Albania, Romania, and Greece-had achieved their independence
over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth
century. Once free, they had devoted their energies to
trying to dominate each other, squabbling over such
inextricable intermingled ethnic and religious jumbles as
Macedonia and Thrace with a barbarous zeal both murderous
and indefatigable.Briefly united in 1912, the Balkan countries had succeeded
in liberating the remainder of the Balkans from Turkish
rule, driving the Turks back to the outskirts of
Constantinople, the last Turkish outpost on European soil.
The following year the Serbs and Bulgarians had gone at one
another with savage abandon, each determined to rule
Macedonia. The hapless Macedonians themselves had borne the
brunt of the struggle, thousands of them massacred, still
more dragooned into the invading armies of the Serbs and
Bulgarians. Serbia triumphed, for it had won the backing of
a powerful patron, which was determined to use the small
Balkan state as the fulcrum for its drive to the south and
west-the mighty Russian Empire.Defeated and humiliated by Japan in 1905, the tsarist
imperialists had been thwarted in their drive to the east.
Gone were the days of the previous centuries when the
Cossacks swept invincibly across the crystalline snows of
Siberia and the great Bear advanced into Alaska and down the
California coastline. The Russian navy had been shown up as
ponderously inefficient and outdated. After a bizarre
adventure in the North Sea, in which Russian ships had fired
on English fishing vessels in the belief that they were
Japanese destroyers, the Russian fleet had sailed 10,000
miles only to be sent to the bottom by Admiral Togo's
Japanese fleet at Tsushima Strait in May 1905. Russia's
armies had been bested by the Japanese in Manchuria, with
the resultant loss for the tsar of Port Arthur and the
remainder of Manchuria.

Thereafter the imperialists of the Russian Empire had
changed their strategy, seeking to exploit the hopes and
fears of their Slavic cousins in the Balkans, preeminently
the Serbs and the Bulgarians, whose countries offered ready
access to the Adriatic and that age-old objective of the
tsars, the multicolored domes and battlements of
Constantinople, gateway to the warm waters of the
Mediterranean.

***

In 1908, still smarting from their Far Eastern disaster, the
Russian imperialists and their Serbian proteges had been
forced to accept, at the Congress of London, the annexation
by Austria-Hungary of Bosnia- Herzegovina, a Slavic
territory to the west of Serbia and long coveted by the
Serbs. Serbian control of the region would have brought
their tsarist masters access to the ports of the Adriatic,
but the Russians felt themselves too weak militarily to
press the issue.Chastened but undiscouraged, the imperialist circle around
Tsar Nicholas Il-the "Pan-Slavists"-intensified its
activity. Nicholas, dangerous precisely because of his weak
will and his eternal vacillation, gave them free rein. The
St. Petersburg regime stirred the already boiling Balkan
cauldron ever more vigorously. Russian agents and Russian
advisers gave the orders and supplied the wherewithal for
the Serbs in their growing quarrel with Austria. As the
Russian minister to Serbia, Nicolai Hartwig, indiscreetly
remarked to the Romanian minister, Filaliti, on November 12,
1912: "Russia counts on making Serbia, enlarged by the
Balkan provinces of Austria-Hungary, the vanguard of
Pan-Slavism."Hartwig, the tsar's ambassador, was the undisputed master of
Belgrade, the man whom the French ambassador, Descos, called
"the real sovereign of Serbia." Others referred to Hartwig
merely as "the viceroy."In theory the head of state was Serbia's king, Peter I, but
King Peter, the grandson of a hog dealer, owed his accession
to the throne to a cabal of Serbian plotters who had
assassinated the previous king, Alexander Obrenovich, and
his queen, Draga, in a grisly double murder in 1903. King
Peter's family, the Karageorgeviches, had waged a running
feud with their Obrenovich rivals for most of the preceding
century, in one incident of which the chief of the
Obrenovich clan had presented the carefully salted head of
one of the Karageorgeviches to the sultan in Istanbul.Peter I's prime minister, Nicolas Pashich, was a cunning and
malleable man who had switched without undue fits of
conscience from being Alexander's prime minister one day to
heading the government of the king elevated by the assassins
the next. He feared the firebrands who had murdered the
royal couple; he was willing to serve as the tool of the
powerful and influential Russians.

The interrogation of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassins in
Sarajevo led, slowly and inexorably, to the implication of
the highest councils of the Serbian regime. At first
tight-lipped, the two terrorists, Chabrinovich, who had
tossed the bomb which missed the archduke but wounded his
officer, and Gavrilo Princip, who fired the fatal shots,
denied any larger conspiracy. They let slip only one name.
When asked who had taught them how to shoot they replied:
"Ciganovich." In fact, Milan Ciganovich, an official of the
Servian Railway and member of the secret terrorist group,
"The Black Hand," was a personal agent of Prime Minister
Pashich.

CHAPTER II

Europe Reacts

Had the Serbian government felt itself above suspicion, it
would have immediately begun a public investigation of a
grave crime in which five of its nationals had been involved. To refrain from an
investigation or even from issuing a public statement could
only strengthen the growing suspicion in Austria of official
Serbian involvement.In fact Pashich had known of the plot weeks before June
28th. As the English historian George Malcolm Thomson was
later to write:This tall, good-looking man, whose dignified beard and
imposing presence disguised one of the cunningest foxes of
the Balkans, knew about the projected murder almost as soon
as it was planned. Perhaps he had heard about it
accidentally, through some eavesdropper in one of the
handful of Belgrade cafes where politics was discussed. More
likely, an agent of his, a railway clerk named Gaginovich,
who was also a member of the Black Hand, passed the news on
to him. (The Twelve Days, p. 48)Thus the conspiracy could have been thwarted in advance. In
that case, however, Pashich would have certainly incurred
the vengeance of the Black Hand. Since the bearded old
politician valued his skin, he feared to quash the plot
openly.On the other hand Pashich was anxious to cover himself
against any accusations of complicity from the Austrian
side. He hit upon the expedient of delivering a veiled and
delphic warning to the Austrians, which was delivered by the
Serbian ambassador to Vienna to the Austrian minister of
finance, Leon Bilinski, a Pole from Galicia, among whose
duties was to administer Bosnia. Bilinski, who was no loyal
supporter of the Austro- Hungarian empire (he was to defect
during the course of the war), either made little of the
Serbian ambassador's oblique warning that the archduke might
meet with a mishap on his visit to Bosnia, or, if better
informed, failed to act on the information. No protective
measures were taken; Franz Ferdinand went to his doom.Indeed, there was further Serbian involvement with the
conspirators before the assassination: the Serbian crown
prince, Alexander, had met with one of the killers in
Belgrade.Who had conceived and directed the operation? The culprit
was none other than the chief of military
intelligence, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrievich, a hardened
terrorist and Russia's chief catspaw in the Balkans. As a
young captain Dimitrievich had taken part in the murder of
Serbia's royal couple eleven years before. Later he would
scheme to assassinate Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II as well as
the kings of Bulgaria and Greece. In the pay of Russia's
ambassador, Hartwig, Dimitrievich doubled as the creator and
leader of the secret Black Hand, which carried out the
bloody work of Serbia and Serbia's Russian puppetmasters
against Austria-Hungary.

***

In the immediate aftermath of the attack the Austrians
suspected the role of the Serbian government, but nothing of
possible Russian involvement. Through prudence, but also out
of weakness, precious weeks were spent in a painstaking
investigation of the crime, as far as was possible given its
origins across the border.Had Austria, virtually certain of Serbia's involvement,
demanded an explanation after a few days, when European
indignation was still at a fever pitch over the grisly
crime, it could have easily brought the little Balkan state
to heel without protest from the great powers. For
provocations a hundred times less flagrant the British had
shelled Copenhagen in 1801 and 1807. When France's envoy to
Algiers was swatted with the dey's fan in 1830, the French
landed troops and annexed the country. Vienna, however, was
a capital of prating old men and dandified poltroons. Its
emperor, Franz Josef, who still commanded vast respect and
had immense influence, was a worn-out old wraith, no longer
politically competent.Franz Josef's foreign minister, Count Leopold von Berchtold
von and zu Ungarisch, felt out of place as a diplomat or
politician. Life to his taste was an endless round of plays
and concerts, frivolous salons, visits to the races or rare
book shops. Seldom seen without his high silk hat, he was a
fastidious dresser as well as an avid scholar of the Greek
classics. A shrewd observer wrote of him: "He was sincerely
devoted to the country he served disastrously and with all
the wisdom he could muster."Count Berchtold, like his counterpart at the head of the
Austro- Hungarian Imperial Army, General Conrad von
Hötzendorff, a militarist fire-eater without the slightest
hint of diplomacy, was all for chastizing the Serbs.
Neither, however, could overcome the Austrian inertia. The
first step Austria was able to take came almost a week after
the shooting, when Franz Josef wrote to the German emperor,
Kaiser Wilhelm II, on July 4, 1914, asking to consult with
him before taking any measures against Serbia.

Wilhelm II, intelligent but neurotic, was a capricious
individual. Inclined to annotate state documents submitted to him with vindictive
interjections ("Toads! Crows! Jesuits!"), he often played
the ham actor in transitory political melodramas, which,
however, concluded without ill effect.At Berlin on June 28 he had received the news of Franz
Ferdinand's death with horror, for the two men were good
friends. He replied to Franz Josef's note that he stood
ready to fulfill his obligations as Austria's ally if it
should emerge that Serbia had abetted or protected the
assassins. Nevertheless, Wilhelm II had no intention of
leading the German Empire into a European war, nor of
expanding the incident outside the confines of the west
Balkans.

The Kaiser, represented so often since as a
hysterical ogre determined to crush everything in his path,
was at the time so little disposed to prepare for war that
he left on July 6 for a three-week cruise on his yacht, the
Hohenzollern, bound for the Norwegian coast. Likewise, his
ministers were off on vacation: von Jagow, the foreign
minister, off on his honeymoon; von Moltke, the chief of
staff, taking the cure at Carlsbad; Admiral von Tirpitz
relaxing at Tarasp in Switzerland. The kings of Saxony and
Bavaria had departed their capitals for their country
estates.Nor had the Kaiser or his ministers put in motion any
preparatory measures before they left. There were no
provisions for the stockpiling of grain: not a single ton of
flour was purchased by Germany in July 1914. Indeed, even
the leaders of the German opposition had left Berlin.

While the Kaiser and his government had little motive and
less desire to plunge Europe into a fratricidal war,
feelings were different among the leaders of France.
Frenchmen still smarted at Germany's annexation of Alsace
and part of Lorraine in 1871. At the Place de la Concorde in
Paris, the statues of Metz and Strasbourg remained covered
with crepe.In 1914, I was just a boy of eight, born in the Belgian
Ardennes across the border from France. Even there, in long,
silent valleys remote from almost everywhere, the story of
Alsace-Lorraine gripped our emotions. At the sight of the
swallows returning from the south in springtime, we sang "
`Tis a bird that comes from France," just as did the
Alsatian children in their Prussian exile. Like the
Frenchmen, we thought of Alsace-Lorraine with sorrow, of the
Germans with rancor: the accursed Prussians would have to
surrender it, even if it took force.Germany, driving toward world economic and political power,
its population growing by 600,000 each year, was little
concerned with lording it over the French. Bismarck himself
had never been enthusiastic about the annexation, and his
successors were prepared to make concessions to France.
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, imperial chancellor in 1912,
had offered to the French ambassador in Berlin that year,
Jules Cambon, to negotiate with France as to the neutrality
and complete autonomy of Alsace-Lorraine, but had been haughtily rejected.France's ill will was manifest. The Germans preferred to
delude themselves by hoping that time would salve France's
wounds.

***

The official British reaction to the crime at Sarajevo was
more guarded. The chief concern of Britain's imperial
establishment was the steady growth of the German navy and
merchant fleet, which Wilhelm II had been building up
singlemindedly (in contrast to the prudence that would later
be exercised by Hitler, who agreed in 1935 to limit the
German fleet to 35 per cent of the Royal Navy).In truth, for the English public, Belgrade, let alone
Sarajevo, was an unknown. For Londoners Singapore, Hong
Kong, even the Falkland Islands weren't far from the mouth
of the Thames, but the Danube was a wild and unknown river
at the end of the civilized world (just as Czechoslovakia
was for Neville Chamberlain in 1938 "a remote country of
which we know little").

In Belgrade, Prime Minister Pashich, with no small
hypocrisy, caused a solemn Mass to be celebrated in memory
of the departed archduke and his consort. With tears in his
eyes, he beseeched the Almighty to receive with kindness His
two servants, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie. So cynical did
this pose appear that the French minister at Belgrade,
Descos, refused to attend.Descos had long been suspicious of the intrigues of the
Serbian government. He had observed the rapid growth of
Serbia's army, which had doubled in size in the preceding
year as tens of thousands of Macedonians were drafted into
its ranks. Who was it who threatened the country?The French ambassador had observed the corrupt business by
which millions of gold francs in low-interest loans had
flowed from France to Serbia, after the way had been
prepared by Serbian bribes of influential Frenchmen, above
all in the press. The French senator Humbert, publisher of
Le Journal, personally received a 15 per cent commission on
a big order of military footgear sold to Belgrade. Such an
outlay demanded drastic economies in production: cardboard
soles were substituted for leather, and the Serbian army
would make its catastrophic retreat in 1915 barefooted.The case of Senator Humbert was not an isolated one. Descos,
already disgusted by these goings-on, requested to be
relieved as ambassador: the hypocritical Mass for the dead
had been the last straw. At the same time, Pashich had
requested his recall, and Descos left Belgrade a
disillusioned man.

Meanwhile, the Austrians were continuing their investigation
of the Sarajevo attack. After learning the identity of
Ciganovich, Austrian investigators quickly learned, courtesy
of the Serbian government, that the plotter in question had
mysteriously vanished. In Pashich's laconic phrase, "He
departed for an unknown destination on the 28th of June." He
would not surface for more than a year.The ire of the Austrians grew slowly. Only after three weeks
did the Austrian ambassador at Belgrade, Herr Giesl, appear
before the Pashich government to present Austria's demand
that a committee of inquiry be set up, to include
representatives of both nations.The Austrians couched their demands in harsh terms. First
they stipulated an unequivocal Serbian condemnation of the
assassination; second, a serious investigation of the crime,
to include Austrian representatives.The Serbian government naturally resisted. It was not merely
a matter of Serbia's sovereignty, as Prime Minister Pashich
claimed. As he himself was to confide to Dragomir
Stefanovich, his secretary for foreign affairs (as well as
his stepson): "If we accept this inquiry, they will catch us
red-handed."In the face of Austria's demands, Pashich did something
almost unbelievable. He didn't merely procrastinate, or
stonewall: he fled.Every detail of this strange story has become known. When
Ambassador Giesl presented himself at the Serbian Ministry
for Foreign Affairs on July 23rd, bearing an official
envelope for the prime minister, his secretary told the
emissary tersely, "He has gone."Asked where, the secretary replied, "To the country." It was
impossible to reach him by telephone, according to the
official, so the Austrian had no choice but to deposit his
ultimatum with the secretary.Meanwhile, Pashich was in Nish, eighty miles to the south.
Appraised of the Austrian demand, Pashich, rather than
return to Belgrade at once, jumped on a train that very
afternoon and headed south for Salonika, in order to, as he
told several friends accompanying him, "spend a few days
there to rest incognito." As George Malcolm Thomson summed
up the wily politician's behavior, "Pashish intended to be
`out of touch' during the critical period when the ultimatum
was accepted or rejected, both of those courses equally
dangerous for him."In Belgrade, however, the prince regent, Alexander, saw
Pashich's responsibilities differently. He had the
stationmaster at Nish telegraphed to order the prime
minister's immediate return. Still Pashich persisted,
boarding the train and continuing south. An hour's run down
the line, the train was stopped, and Pashich again ordered
to return to Belgrade at once. After several more hours of
evasion, Pashich finally was able to screw up his resolve
and head back to his capital.On his arrival at Belgrade Station, at five o'clock on the
morning of the twenty-fourth, Pashich, shaggy-bearded and
glassy-eyed, did something quite revealing. Rather than report to the regent, he headed
directly for the Russian embassy. It was clear where the
real power in Serbia resided.

***

Russia, no more than Serbia, could afford to risk a
thorough-going investigation of the Sarajevo conspiracy. As
the tsarist empire's minister of foreign affairs, Sazonov,
declared on July 24, on learning of Austria's formal demand,
"This means war in Europe."He was instantly seconded by France's ambassador to Russia,
Maurice Paléologue, who hastened to Sazonov bearing
President Poincaré's injunction to "Be firm! We must be
firm!"On the twenty-fourth Prince Alexander, the Serbian regent,
sent the tsar an anguished appeal. The Russian response
would reveal its committment to its Serbian stalking
horse-or its lack of commitment. After a few hours, the
telegram arrived. Pashich opened it with trembling hands. He
quickly read it, and then exclaimed, "The good, the great,
the gracious tsar!"Serbia would not have to atone for its misdeed if Russia
could help it.

On the following day, Austria's Herr Giesl again presented
himself at the prime minister's office, a little before six
in the evening. Pashich was there and he answered a firm no
to Austria's ultimatum. The refusal was couched in refined
diplomatic terms, and even offered several concessions, but
the Serbs weren't ready to allow Austrian officials to
conduct an inquiry on Serbian territory, even with the
participation of the Serbs.The Austrian ambassador politely took up his bowler hat and
left to board the six-thirty train for Vienna. Diplomatic
relations had been broken off. War was in the wind.

Ironically, three years later, for his own political
purposes, Pashich would stage a showy inquiry and trial of
the military men who had organized the assassination, a
trial which would end in the execution of Colonel
Dimitrievich and his henchmen.At that time, in 1917, Pashich, his armies having been swept
from the Danube to the Adriatic, after suffering 300,000
dead, would hit on the idea of a reconciliation with
Austria-Hungary, now headed by a new emperor, Karl L
Although Karl I was not adverse to a settlement, the whole
affair would come to nothing more than the end of
Dimitrievich and his confederates and a grim revelation of
the cynicism of the Serbian leader.Had Dimitrievich confessed in 1914, as he did in 1917, the
Pashich government would doubtless have fallen. Neither Serbia, nor
Europe, would be in ruins, however, as they were in 1917.As Dimitrievich would reveal before his death, the real
director of the conspiracy had been Russia's military
attaché, Colonel Victor Artmanov, who had told Dimitrievich
in the early stages: "Go ahead. If attacked, you will not
stand alone."In his testimony, Dimitrievich revealed that Artmanov had
financed the plotters, and that he had not carried out the
scheme until he had the Russian's final go-ahead.As for Artmanov, he had left Belgrade well before June 28,
the day of the killings. On that day he was in Zurich, and
he continued a leisurely journey across Switzerland and
Italy, all the while keeping a meticulous journal which
would enable him to account for his time on any given day.

In St. Petersburg, the tsarist government made haste to
prepare for war. On July 7, 1914-two weeks before Austria's
demands were delivered to Serbia-orders had been issued to
move troops from Serbia to European Russia. By the 25th they
were already billeted in the military district of Moscow.Had Austria been able to interrogate Dimitrievich with the
dispatch later exercised by Pashich's men, she would have
learned quickly that the Sarajevo affair and its
rectification were no mere spat between its own sizeable
forces and little Serbia, but that a five-million man army
from Europe's most populous state stood ready to oppose the
Habsburg empire by force.

After Dimitrievich's death (which several of the powers had
tried to unsuccessfully to stop: Pashich couldn't tolerate
that he still lived and talked), his memory faded for a
quarter of a century, until it was revived and honored by
Tito (Josip Broz), another terrorist, who modestly promoted
himself to marshal. Dimitrievich became a national hero, as
one of the martyrs of the future Yugoslavia. The man who
fired the shots, Gavrilo Princip, has been similarly
honored, and a monument now marks the spot where he stood
and took aim in Sarajevo.Thus was Austria-Hungary lured into the trap that became the
greatest and most destructive war war the world had seen.
The next step for the Russian provocateurs would be to draw
Germany into the trap. By July 31, 1914, this, too, would be
a fait accompli.

CHAPTER III

The German Dynamo

The average person in the West - whether European, American,
or what have you - has long taken for granted that Kaiser
Wilhelm IIbears the chief responsibility for the First World War.
After all, at the end of the war, it was so otherwise
reasonable a man as Britain's Prime Minister David Lloyd
George, who, with victory in sight, announced that he and
his allies would "Hang the kaiser!" Later Lloyd George would
promise the House of Commons that the imperial culprit would
first be driven through the streets of London in an iron
cage, a promise which enabled him to win the elections of
February 1919 handily.Although Lloyd George and the mobs he appealed to, as well
as Britain's allies and the revolutionary successors to
Wilhelm's rule in Germany were cheated of their desire,
Wilhelm's reputation was effectively hanged by the war
propaganda of the day, and has remained on the gallows
thanks to the writings of Establishment historians.Such has been the stultifying effect of this propaganda
that, although large numbers of people still believe the
German emperor to have been a particularly baneful species
of ogre, not one person in a thousand knows anything of
Kaiser Wilhelm's actions in those times. The impression
remains that eight million men died in the abattoirs of
Flanders and Galicia thanks to the Kaiser alone.The Versailles Treaty, which affirmed Germany's sole guilt
for the war, could never have been imposed, of course,
without the central thesis of Wilhelm II's villainy. One
doubt about Wilhelm's alleged war plotting and the whole
fradulent document would lose its force.

***

In fact, what role did Wilhelm II play in the outbreak of
the war?Truth to tell, on the day Austria-Hungary declared war on
Serbia, the Kaiser hadn't been in Germany for days. He was
still sailing the North Sea on his yacht Hohenzollern, a
contented vacationer. Notified of the crime at Sarajevo, he
had expressed his horror, and assured Emperor Franz Josef of
his full support. Nevertheless, at the time he viewed the
affair as merely a local one, in which Austria-Hungary, deprived of its heir to
the throne and its army commander-in-chief in one stroke,
had an understandably legitimate concern. Still unaware of
what the Austrians would learn in their interrogation of the
assassins, the Kaiser departed at the beginning of July,
determined to spend the entire month at sea.Had that impulsive ruler really wished to ignite a European
war, he surely would have paid more attention to putting his
plans in motion. But he allowed his chief of staff, von
Moltke, to continue his stay at Carlsbad, while Admiral
Tirpitz, commander of the navy, whiled away his leave at
Tarasp.Why, in any case, would Germany and its leader want war? By
1914, Germany had achieved economic preeminence on the
Continent without firing a shot. As the French historian
Lavisse remarked in an address delivered at the Sorbonne in
April, 1917, referring to the years between 1871 and 1914,
"At no time in history have we seen such a stupendous growth
in work and wealth in any country in so little time."Since 1870 Germany's population had increased by fifteen
million people, while England held steady and France
stagnated. The Germans no longer had to emigrate, for the
country's prodigious growth provided work for all. The coal
output had nearly doubled in the years between 1900 and
1910. The German metallurgical, chemical, and precision
instrument industries were the best in the world. Everywhere
German products commanded admiration, and its exports had
doubled between 1910 and 1913, reaching a total of ten
billion marks in that year.These goods traveled to far-off places
- China and the
Americas - in German ships, for the merchant marine had
entered the era of its greatest expansion, and the imperial
colors waved over the seven seas.German expansion was all the more impressive in that it was
carried out in several decades without military conquest, a
remarkably pacific expansion when compared to the bloody
rise of such imperial powers as Britain and France, not to
mention America, which gained its share of territory from
Mexico.The quality of Germany's product and the efficiency of
German commercial agents won fearful jealousy, especially
among the lords of British imperialism. As the eminent
French historian Pierre Renouvin testified:From 1900 on, Germany has had marked success. Thanks to the
initiative of her commercial travelers, who endeavor to be
aware of the new needs of their customers and to satisfy
their tastes, and thanks to the easy terms that the
exporters offer to their buyers, German commerce is in the
process of taking the lead over British commerce in Holland,
where Rotterdam is in effect an appendage of the Rhineland;
in Belgium, where part of the business of Antwerp is in the
hands of 40,000 Germans; in Italy, which buys metallurgical
and chemical products from Germany; in Russia, where the
Germans have the advantage of proximity and better knowledge of the country;
and even in Serbia. The margin of superiority that the
British trade has in the markets of France, Spain, and the
Ottoman Empire is constantly diminishing.The English producer and exporter is annoyed at everywhere
coming up against these German tradesmen who do them out of
a sale. The economic rivalry fosters a bad climate in public
opinion that can not fail to have an effect on political
relations. (La Crise européenne, p. 142)Until then, the seas had been the almost private domain of
the British Empire for two centuries, world commerce a
British monopoly throughout the nineteenth century. Both
Spain and France had been soundly thrashed for failing to
accede to Britain's supremacy with good grace. Philip II of
Spain and France's Napoleon had seen their dreams sunk along
with their fleets by the Royal Navy.Wilhelm II, by having the audacity to construct a merchant
fleet able to service 70 percent of Germany's overseas
trade, called forth the wrath of an arrogant monopoly, which
twenty years later even Hitler would shrink from
antagonizing. The queen of England expressed the
Establishment's view when she complained that "William 1I is
playing at Charlemagne."For the most part, the British leadership was reluctant to
give vent to its misgivings at the rise of Germany's
industry and fleet. The Germans, for their part, cherished
the hope that they could arrange matters with the British in
some kind of gentleman's agreement.The British response, however, was not encouraging,
particularly on the matter of German colonial expansion to
siphon off some of its burgeoning population. Every such
effort was jealously opposed by Great Britain. Small
neighbors such as Belgium or Holland could possess huge
empires sixty or eighty times the size of the metropolitan
territory; after all, they had long been considered to be
Britain's dutiful satellites. Germany was a powerful rival.That to effectively compete with the rising German economy
required nothing more than that the United Kingdom
manufacture products as well- made and as inexpensive as
those of the Reich was lost on the British. Challenged, they
felt threatened.Solitary, haughty, and brusque, the British set about
looking for allies against the German "menace." In 1904
Britain began a rapprochement with her hereditary enemy,
France, when both nations had concluded the Entente
Cordiale, which in reality would always remain the
Mésentente Cordiale. Nevertheless, the fact that the
ponderous John Bull and the light- limbed Marianne had
opened the dance marked a turning point in history.It would take the double disaster for the British
Establishment of two disastrous world wars in this century
to drive home the recognition that its world monopoly had at
last ended, superseded by the uneasy condominium of the
United States of America and the Soviet Union.

***

Despite an abortive British offer of Portuguese Angola to
Germany in exchange for their discontinuing the build-up of
their fleet, made in 1912, Wilhelm II refused to be
dissuaded, and the shipwrights continued their work. This
didn't mean that the Kaiser was striving for war, however.
Indeed in 1905 he concluded a fraternal agreement with his
erstwhile Russian rival the tsar, on his own initiative,
while vacationing on his yacht off Denmark.The tsar was by nature a gentle soul, dripping with good
intentions. But he was weak-willed and neurotic, and he was
constantly surrounded by a guard of Pan-Slav activists,
bellicose grand dukes, and shadowy wire- pullers and
manipulators of all sorts. Despite Wilhelm's intent to draw
France into his cordial understanding with Russia, interests
inimical to a Russian-German detente around the tsar
succeeded in torpedoing the agreement within four months.
The anti-German Franco-Russian entente of 1894 continued in
force, and the Russian imperialists eyed Bohemia (in
Austria-Hungary) and Galicia more greedily than ever. For
their part, the French, bolstered by the hope of the support
of Russia's massive army, schemed to retake Alsace-Lorraine.

CHAPTER IV

Ambition and Revanche

The French Republic had been obsessed with the loss of
Alsace- Lorraine since 1871. At the National Assembly in
Bordeaux in that year, Victor Hugo had trumpeted his undying allegiance to
the cause of the lost territories. After him Déroulède,
Barras, and Bourget led the literary chorus of revenge.Noble as the French protest may have been, it didn't take
much history into account - particularly that of its own
country. France had been quite skillful in the past at
annexing the territories of its neighbors. After all, how
had Nord, Dunkirk, Lille, Arras, and Douai, all bearing the
Germanic eagle on their escutcheons, become united with
France? The same went for Roussillon, originally part of
Catalonia, as well as Burgundy and Verdun, a German
cathedral town until 1552. Toul had only become French in
1648, at the Treaty of Westphalia.Alsace and Lorraine themselves had been acquired in the not
too distant past. Lorraine had been German for a millennium.
Almost 400 years before, Emperor Charles V had dreamed of
making it a free and inalienable state, a buffer between
France and Germany. The French had had other aspirations,
however. In 1633 the French captured Nancy; one hundred
thirty-three years later the remainder of Lorraine was
seized and annexed. When the Germans retook the province in
1870, it had been French scarely more than a century.The case was similar with Alsace. In 843 the Treaty of
Verdun had made it part of Lotharingia. Twenty-seven years
later, at the Treaty of Mersen, it had become the territory
of Louis the German. From the twelfth to the fifteenth
century it had been part of the Duchy of Swabia, and it had
enjoyed a flourishing growth. Not until 1679, after French
troops led by Marshal Turenne had bested the forces of the
German Empire, did the Treaty of Nijmegen acknowledge French
sovereignty over Alsace. Strasbourg would remain German
until 1681, and the sizeable city of Mulhouse did not fall
to France until it was seized in 1798.To be sure, the last born
- or the last stolen - is often
the most beloved. Such was the story with Alsace-Lorraine.
And there is no doubt that Alsace- Lorraine would have
played a healthier role in European history if it had formed the core of a buffer state between the two rivals,
rather than the jousting field of their armies for a
thousand years.Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II had at length come to
realize that the issue of the "lost provinces" was an
impassable barrier to Franco-German reconciliation, and in
1911 Germany had granted autonomy, within the Reich, to
Alsace-Lorraine. This despite evidence of growing acceptance
of German rule among the population of the provinces, to
such an extent that the French historian Renouvin was forced
to admit:The citizens of Alsace-Lorraine are aware of the material
advantages which accrue to them from the general prosperity
of Germany; they no longer accept protest deputies, but send
representatives to the Reichstag who take their seats with
the German parties, both Catholic and socialist. (La Crise
européenne, p. 138)

Not only with regard to Alsace-Lorraine, but in colonial
matters as well, Germany had sought to appease France, but
the French government had remained obdurate. Having conceded
France control of Morocco in 1906, Germany received in
return a thin strip of unproductive land in Equatorial
Africa. Moreover, France's new British allies had exerted
pressure on Spain to refuse Germany authorization to lay a
submarine cable through the Canary Islands to establish
telephone communication to the Central African colonies.Undaunted, the German government had offered France close
cooperation in 1912, as France's President Poincaré would
later admit before the Chamber of Deputies in 1922: "It is
beyond question that during the entire year of 1912 Germany
made sincere efforts to ally herself with us for the common
interest of Europe and the maintenance of peace," then
adding, "but she wasn't ready yet."There, then, was the truth. No matter how eager Germany
showed herself to make concessions, as long as Alsace and
Lorraine were not under the French tricolor there would be
no rapprochement. Had other countries dealt with France in a
like manner there would have been no reconciliation with
Spain until France had ceded Perpignan back to Catalonia; no
reconciliation with Belgium until France had returned the
Nord region to its Belgo-Flemish fatherland. For the
reconquest of its lost borderlands, however, France looked
not for reconciliation but for military strength.

The alliance which France concluded with the Russian Empire
in 1894 was a strange one. Paris and St. Petersburg were
more than a thousand miles apart, a huge distance in those
days before aviation. The French people and the peoples of
the tsarist empire differed immensely. For the preceeding
century the two nations' only meaningful contacts had been
as enemies, when Napoleon had led his Grande Armée to Moscow
in 1812 and when the French Zouaves had helped British
troops occupy the Crimea in 1854.For the moment, however, France and Russia's interests, or
at least those of the ruling political elites, coincided.
The French Republic needed several million extra soldiers,
and Russia had them. Russia needed billions of gold francs
to finance its Pan-Slavist and Far Eastern projects, and
France was willing to supply them.Neither party was naive about the implications of the deal.
The French politicians felt no fondness for the tsarist
autocracy, nor did the Pan-Slav Russian grand dukes have any
regard for what they called France's "mobocracy." Yet the
military ties grew increasingly closer, with formal and
regular collaboration between the general staffs, joint
military reviews, and visits exchanged by the two fleets.
The shabby bargain would soon bear fruit.

France's drift toward open hostilities with Germany was
strengthened by domestic political developments. In 1913
Raymond Poincaré, who had been minister of foreign affairs,
was elected president of the French Republic. When Poincaré
took over the Elysée Palace from President Faillières at the
start of that year, Faillières is reported to have said,
"I'm afraid that war is entering the Elysée behind me." In
George Malcolm Thomson's view, "It is certain that the
Lorrainer Poincaré felt no repugnance for war."There had been opponents of France's party of revanche, some
of them with great influence. Joseph Caillaux, a former
prime minister and minister of finance, was a powerful
politician whom Poincaré feared greatly as a rival. Jean
Jaurès, the fiery socialist orator and pacifist, could rouse
the masses like no other French politician. With Poincaré
firmly in power, however, their voices were powerless to
affect the French government's military and diplomatic
machinations.Poincaré was not a warm man; neither was he an eloquent or
conciliatory one. He was rail thin, with the eyes of a
stuffed owl. I knew him personally in my youth. I was
astounded, on meeting him, at his shrill voice. He seemed a
cold little man, his cheeks puffed out in congenital ill
temper. With whiskers like an iron-gray shaving brush, he
seemed a sly fox. He mistrusted other people and they
mistrusted him. A lifelong hairsplitter, he crammed his
political and diplomatic activity, his confidences, his
parliamentary replies, and his memoirs with so many lies,
subterfuges, evasions, and bits of nonsense that the sheer
weight of it all was overpowering.He seems to have been honest in his personal financial
conduct, a rare virtue among men in politics, finance, and
the press, who usually wallow in moral turpitude. Yet his
dirty tricks in politics were numberless, and one can only wish he had mulcted a few hundred million francs
from the public treasury rather than sent a million and a
half Frenchmen to their deaths in the bloodbath of the First
World War.

Poincaré could not seek war openly and officially, although
secretly he strove for it with all his might. When the war
came, he later said, it was a "divine surprise." Charles de
Gaulle, who, with his hawk's eye, had no equal in looking
into the subconscious of his fellow Frenchmen, wrote in La
France et son armée: "He did not watch the tragedy
approaching without a secret hope."In 1912, however, Poincaré was unwilling to commit himself
to the Balkan adventures of the Russian Pan-Slavists. He
couldn't mistake Belgrade or Sarajevo for Strasbourg. That
suited the Russians and they went to considerable effort to
conceal their intrigues from their French allies.In March 1912, unbeknownst to the French, Russia's
ambassador and virtual plenipotentiary in Belgrade, Nicholas
de Hartwig, had drafted the secret clauses of the treaty
between Serbia and Bulgaria which stipulated the number of
Bulgarian troops that were to be placed at Serbia's disposal
in the event of a war with Austria-Hungary.Poincaré was irked by his ally's secretiveness, particularly
when his ambassadors could only elicit hypocritical denials
from their Russian colleagues. Poincaré for a time remained
poorly informed about Russia's Balkan moves, even more so
than their mutual German enemy. He was kept in the dark
about Russia's provisional redrawing of the borders of its
satellite states in the Balkans prefatory to the wars of
1912 and 1913. Despite his caustic objections when he
learned the truth, the president of France had to swallow
the Russians' galling explanations as if they were
after-dinner mints.In 1913, after finally obtaining the text of a secret treaty
between Russia and Bulgaria, he murmured to Sergei Sazonov,
the Russian foreign minister: "I call to Monsieur Sazonov's
attention that the treaty is a covenant of war not only
against Turkey but also against Austria." (Poincaré, Les
Balkans en feu, p. 113)Sazonov responded in three words: "I must agree," but was no
more forthcoming with information about Russia's aims in the
Balkans.The new president made every effort not only to prevent
Franco-German understanding but also to antagonize
Austria-Hungary, which, in his opinion, was too well
disposed toward France.For example, Poincaré had personally managed to torpedo a
loan applied for on the Bank of France by the Austrians, who
had an impeccable financial reputation. The French had
previously lent out forty-five billion gold francs, one third of the total to Russia, on most
generous terms. Serbia too had enjoyed a bit of this French
largesse. Regardless of the fact that extending the loan to
Austria would have greatly heightened French influence in
the great Central European power, Poincaré was determined to
give offense to that Teutonic ally of the hated Germans.With the same churlish calculation Poincaré went out of his
way to offend Wilhelm II. In early 1914, after Wilhelm had
graciously invited the French minister, Aristide Briand, to
a regatta at Kiel, Poincaré forbade Briand to attend,
decreeing that "an interview of that kind is disturbing and
outrageous."Poincaré's diplomats on the spot repeatedly informed Paris
of Germany's benevolent intentions toward France. At Berlin,
Ambassador Cambon telegraphed Paris a confidence made him by
Baron Beyens, the Belgian minister to Germany: "One fact
that is absolutely certain is that the German chancellor
wishes to avoid a European conflagration at any cost."The brilliant socialist leader, Marcel Sambat, underlined
Wilhelm II's essential caution in his book Faites la paix ou
faites un roi: "The German emperor has braved ridicule and
even the reproach of cowardice for twenty- five years."

As Russia continued to step up its intrigues in the Balkans,
Paris grew better informed. Serbia was intensifying
preparations against Austria. A coded dispatch dated March
28, 1914, was sent to his government by the French military
attache at Sofia, reporting remarks that Ferdinand, King of
Bulgaria, had made to his military leaders the previous day:
"Let's not interfere with Serbia. Already the Serbs think
they're big enough to defeat Austria. Before six months are
up, they will attack her in alliance with Russia."The French government was clearly unconcerned about the
prospect of an Austro-Serbian war three months before
Sarajevo. Rather than seek to mediate, France busily
supplied Serbia with the credit to build up its stocks of
arms and material. A big French loan in September 1913
provided the impetus. French money not only armed the Serbs,
it made Serbian leaders wealthy.As an example of the corruption spawned by the
Franco-Serb-Russian politico-financial nexus, consider the
affair of the Mauser rifles. On November 29, 1913, the
secretary general of the minister of foreign affairs,
Dragomir Stefanovich, drafted this letter to the French
financier and press czar (Le Temps), Edgar Roels:Gentlemen:The matter of the rifles is urgent. Please consider it of
the utmost urgency. Please tell me the earliest possible
date the factory can complete the order. The price of the rifles can go as high as 80 francs apiece.
(The commissions must be included in the price.) As I've
told you, we are talking exclusively about the Mauser 7mm
1910 model. Since Mauser is in a cartel with the Austrian
Steyr Works, we have misgivings about placing the order with
Mauser here, as it will ultimately be Steyr which
manufactures the guns, and it will be impossible to obtain
the rifles if political conditions become complicated. That
happened previously, in 1908. The shipment in question must
be paid for from the proceeds of the loan made in France.
Under no circumstances must anything be said to Mauser.The Mauser rifles purchased by Paris arrived in February and
March, 1914, in Serbia. For their troubles, the following
Serbian dignitaries received commissions: Prime Minister
Pashich, 4.5 to 5 per cent, depending on the purchase;
Voivod Putnik got 3 per cent; the court grand marshal and
the finance marshal each received a 1 per cent commission;
and Serbia's generalissmo made out with 2 percent.Such was the level of indecency reached by this sort of
looting that after the war the Yugoslavian Democratic
Socialist Party would be able to accuse Nicholas Pashich of
personally having stolen a million gold francs given by
Russia to Serbia. The Socialists would also accuse the
former Serbian minister to Paris, M.R. Vesnich, of having
made off with another million in gold francs that had been
authorized during the war for the care of the Serbian
wounded.

The Russians also set to work to draw Romania into the toils
of her anti- Austrian agitation, for Romania was a crucial
ally of Austria-Hungary, bound to her in a treaty that dated
back to 1883.Grand Duke Nicholas, uncle of the tsar, one of the most
determined of the Pan-Slav warmongers, came to Bucharest to
corrupt both the Romanian government and the royal family.
He had immediate success with the Romanian prime minister,
Take Ionescu. As Dragomir Stefanovich later revealed in his
Memoirs and Documents of a Serbian Diplomat:

In December 1912, Take Ionescu met twice with Grand Duke
Nicholas in the presence of our chargé d'affaires at the
Russian legation. It was in the course of the second of
these conversations that a definite amount was set for
the allowance which would thereafter be paid to the
Romanian statesman as the price of the assistance he
proposed to lend to Russia's anti-Austrian propaganda.
The sum was to be 5,000 gold francs each month.Take Ionescu guaranteed the Grand Duke Nicholas that in
the event of an Austro-Russian conflict, he and his
friends, supported by the principal military leaders -
in particular by Generals Filipescu and Averescu - would
make it impossible for King Carol and his pro-German
ministers to fulfill the obligations of the treaty of
alliance linking Romania and the Austrian government
since 1883.

lonescu's predecessor as prime minister, Marchiloman,
managed to obtain and publish photographs of Ionescu's
receipts. Ionescu, it was revealed, had also been subsidized
by secret funds from Italy. And Ionescu himself had been
subsidizing the French daily, Le Temps, and its agency in
the Balkans: this money, of course, having come from the
Russians, who themselves were being funded with huge French
loans.Stefanovich noted in his memoirs: "As far as we personally
[the Serbian foreign ministry] were concerned, we were
assured from January 1913 on that when the decisive moment
came, Romania would march with us against Austria-Hungary."The Germans were quick to catch on to the Russians' activity
in Romania. In January, 1913, the German minister to
Bucharest telegraphed Berlin: "The number of secret agents
and spies that Russia has maintained in Romania for some
months now is becoming prodigious. They are all
concentrating their efforts on stirring up the country
against Austria. 1 ask myself what they are driving at."In his turn, the German ambassador in Athens, Count Kuadt,
telegraphed on March 1, 1913: "Russian propaganda is
seeping down to the bottommost strata of the Romanian
population."The Russians, who according to Ambassador Tschirschky, the
German envoy to Austria-Hungary, had amassed a slush fund of
a million rubles with which to bribe the Romanians, were
ably seconded in their work by the French ambassador to
Bucharest, Blondel. Blondel invited a steady stream of
French politicians and journalists to Romania to spread the
anti-Austro-Hungarian gospel, among them André Tardieu of Le
Temps.Tardieu was, in Paris, the close confidant of the Russian
ambassador, Alexander Izvolsky, who wrote his foreign
minister, Sazonov, in 1912, "I have an interview with
Monsieur Tardieu every other day." Tardieu was a slippery
and unscrupulous dealer who had intrigued with a German
diplomat in Paris to set up an illegal rubber consortium in
the Congo, which would have brought him millions through
frontmen, until the financial watchdog of the French
assembly, Joseph Caillaux, had blown the whistle.Six months before Sarajevo, Tardieu was authorized to offer
the Romanians Transylvania, a part of Austria-Hungary, in
exchange for their cooperation. Publicly and provocatively
Tardieu delivered a lecture titled "Transylvania is
Romania's Alsace-Lorraine" in Bucharest.On June 24, four days before the assassination of the
archduke and his wife, Take Ionescu telegraphed Tardieu in
code: "Agreement in principle all points satisfactory common
interests concluded yesterday following conversation with
Sazonov, Bratianu. On basis recognition our claims to
Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina. Stop. All comments at present
inopportune, latter follows by legation courier."On the same day the Russian endorsed the French guarantees
to Romania.

Later France's Georges Clemenceau would declare, "Of all the
swine in the war, the Romanians were the most swinish."
Perhaps this is a questionable judgment: there was
swinishness all around at the time, particularly in the
Balkans.

CHAPTER V

Poincaré and Caillaux

As determined as the French politicians were to make war, it
was still necessary for them to stampede the mass of
Frenchmen in the direction of war. Here politicians like
Poincaré found the covert aid of Russian agents invaluable.It was a strange but mutually beneficial arrangement. The
Russians subsidized the French newspapers, which plumped for
military and financial support of Russia, enabling the
Russians to dispose of even more funds for bribery. The
warmongers in French politics reaped the rewards of the
endless press drumbeat of hostility against the Central
Powers, Germany and Austria. There was little difficulty in
finding newspapermen of sufficient venality to allow their
headlines and editorials to be scripted by a foreign power.
In fact, the problem for the Russians was to pick and choose
from among the throng which crowded forward, hungry for
bribes.Arthur Raffalovich, the Russian finance minister's delegate
in France, reported back to his prime minister, Count Witte,
"Since it is impossible to buy everybody, it will be
necessary to make a selection." He added, "Every day you
learn to despise someone else."From the outset in 1912, the Russian bribemasters ladled out
hundreds of thousands of gold francs. An ever-increasing
tempo of subventions soared to three hundred and fifty
thousand gold francs per month. The total outlay finally
reached the tens of millions.After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they published
secret documents revealing the extent as well as the
particulars of the shabby business, among them another
Raffalovich telegram, this one to Ambassador Izvolsky: "You
will deliver this money by means of confidential direct
payments person to person in recompense for the cooperation
accorded you in Le Temps, L'Eclair, and Echo de Paris."
(February 26, 1913)One of Poincaré's allies wrote, of the publications in the
pay of the Pan-Slavists, "An abominable list, where we see
lumped together in the same activity and the same disgrace
Le Figaro of Gaston Calmette, the Radical, the
Journal des
Débats, Henri Letellier's Journal, La République Francaise,
Le Matin, L' Echo de Paris, and L 'Eclair; and dominating
all the rest of the future peace negotiator and future president of the
council of ministers, the foreign bureau chief of Le Temps:
André Tardieu."Tardieu, whom we have just seen at work in Romania, had been
a particular feather in the Russian cap. Several years
before, his paper had been quite sympathetic to
Austria-Hungary; in a letter to St. Petersburg dated
February 16, 1911, Izvolsky wrote: "In the newspaper Le
Temps, Monsieur Tardieu makes use of every opportunity to
show the Franco- Russian rapport in an unfavorable light."A year later, the ambassador could write: "M. Tardieu has
lost no time putting his pen at my disposal."

The Serbian government was not slow to enter the bribery
game after the example of their Russian patrons. As Dragomir
Stefanovich revealed, the Serbs provided key French
newspapers with upwards of one and a half million gold
francs in the two years before Sarajevo, "little
gratuities," in the words of Prime Minister Pashich.Serbian funds set up the influential Balkan agency of
Le
Temps, run by the ubiquitous Tardieu, which supplied French
papers with a good ninety percent of their material from the
Balkans. Russia's minister to Serbia, Hartwig, played a role
in its direction, and the agency possessed its own code,
which not even the French government could decipher.In the face of this bought-and-paid-for press onslaught, the
French public could not long remain unswayed. As one of
Clemenceau's colleagues later wrote:

The most audacious claptrap and the most shameless lies,
once they had been published and commented on by Le
Temps, Echo de Paris, and the Journal des Débats - which
at that time were considered by our ruling classes to be
truly and scrupulously informed organs of the press, and
hence worthy of complete confidence - were copied by all
the provincial newspapers. They were taken for gospel by
millions of both lower and upper middle class citizens,
by retired persons, by workers and by peasants, who for
twenty years saw their savings go in loans to Russia,
'friend and ally,' while waiting to sacrifice their
lives for her.

Poincaré did nothing to obstruct the plans of the Russians
to subvert France's free press. When Izvolsky had come to
him in 1912 with an outline of his plan for corrupting the
French press through bribery, he was quickly able to
overcome his misgivings. Izvolsky's agent, one Davidoff,
handled affairs with Poincaré, who murmured sanctimoniously,
"It will be necessary to distribute [the money] as far as
possible in successive small amounts and with a great deal
of prudence and discretion."Poincaré dealt with an even seamier character, Lenoir, whose
job it was to hand over personally the bulging envelopes to
the media masters.

Poincaré later explained rather piously that he might have
met Lenoir only once, and in any case "never had occasion to
talk with him." The fact that his Jewish finance minister,
Klotz, soiled his hands more intimately in the sordid
details hardly cleanses Poincaré, however. Klotz, who even
demanded on occasion that the Russians make payments in
advance, "because of the generally difficult situation of
the French cabinet," would end his career scandalously after
the war in a criminal court.

Despite the public's growing sympathy for Serbia and Russia,
the French masses still had no stomach for war. Poincaré's
policy was deemed too militaristic, particularly when the
French president wished to extend the term of military
service from two to three years in 1914. Despite a
heightened press campaign, fueled by more Russian funds
("Klotz," Raffalovich reported to St. Petersburg, "demands a
second slice: a big campaign is necessary for the three
years [legislation] to be passed"), the plan was voted down.The chief opposition to Poincaré's military plans was
embodied, in the French establishment, by Joseph Caillaux.
Caillaux, who died in 1944, is largely a forgotten figure
today, but he was perhaps the most intelligent and competent
French statesman of his time. Charles de Gaulle considered
him the first European statesman to understand the essential
role of the economy in public life. Like his adversary
Poincaré, he was tough, imperious, authoritarian. Caillaux
and Poincaré were born enemies, destined to collide with one
another in the course of their careers.Caillaux, unlike so many of the French, was not a die-hard
anti-German. He respected Germany's military strength, and
considered that the colossus across the Rhine could teach
his own country important lessons about work, order, and
modernization of industry. Caillaux believed that the two
nations should complement each other rather than carry on a
rivalry exacerbated by differences in temperament and
psychology. Each had much to offer, and the two might arrive
at a remarkable symbiosis.All too late many Germans and Frenchmen have come to see
that Caillaux was correct. Far better that the French should
have ironed out their differences with Germans of the
caliber of Otto von Bismarck, or even Count von Bülow, than
that Adenauer, chancellor of a truncated Germany, and de
Gaulle, president of a France come far down in the world,
for all its pretensions, should have buried the hatchet
after eighty years of disastrous enmity.In 1914, it seemed that Caillaux stood a strong chance of
winning the elections and attaining the office of president
of the council of ministers, which would force Poincaré,
president of the French Republic, to entrust a good deal of
the business of government to him. Then what would have become of Poincaré's passionate designs for regaining
Alsace and Lorraine?

Poincaré was bolstered in his struggle against Caillaux by
the fact that many Frenchmen, just as adamant about the
"lost" provinces, detested Caillaux for his reasonableness
on the matter. At bottom the French are an extremely
chauvinistic people. For them, the Belgians are the "little
Belgians," who speak a strange gobbledygook. The Spanish are
"semi-Africans," the English "arrant hypocrites," and the
Americans scarcely better than semi-beasts.The outside world is of little interest to the French; they
have no need to know it. Charles Maurras, the most French of
French intellectuals, at the age of forty had never visited
French-speaking Belgium but once, on an excursion trip that
lasted several hours. Pierre Laval, eleven times a cabinet
minister, admitted to me that he had passed through Belgium
only one time, via Liège in a sleeping car at night. To be
sure, the French have seen enough of Europe in ten centuries
of conquest: Brussels, Rome, Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow,
twenty separate invasions of Germany. But those matters
they're loath to discuss.It was on just this aversion to foreigners and inability to
see the other side of a political argument that Poincaré had
based his political career. He had tirelessly agitated for a
policy based on revenge and military strength. Caillaux had
swum against the stream of popular chauvinism, and it had
gained him millions of enemies.

In the vexed matter of the three years' military term,
Poincaré's advantages in playing to popular fervor bumped
against the equally tenacious solicitude of many Frenchmen
for their freedom and their skins. It was fine to agitate
for Alsace and Lorraine in the bistros, glorious to cheer at
the Bastille Day parade along the Champs Elysées ...
Personal sacrifice, at the cost of life and limb, required
more thought.Poincaré had to find some way to torpedo his rival. He found
one in Caillaux's weakness for women. Despite his baldness,
Caillaux had a winning way with the fair sex. Like many a
French politician, he had cantered merrily from mistress to
mistress. Indeed, as is the case with so many men in the
public eye, the women ran after him. Hitler, who was quite
prim in this matter, once showed me a drawer full of letters
from beautiful women of all ages begging him to father a
child for them. In love - Napoleon said it well - safety lies in
flight. Many a time the emperor had to take to his heels.Caillaux had not been so fleet of foot. After enjoying the
charms of one of his admirers for a long time more or less
in secret, he had married her. A pretty ash-blond named
Henriette, who dressed stylishly. They were very much in
love.Nothing really to reproach there, certainly by today's
standards. And Poincaré should have been the last to snoop
around this little idyll, since his own gambols with a woman
somewhat less than innocent had created a sensation,
particularly when his lady love, after a decidedly
unvirtuous career, had demanded that she and the old
anticlericalist be married in secret before an archbishop.
Nor would the man who was to be Poincaré's good right arm in
the Operation Petticoat directed against Caillaux, Louis
Barthou, win any awards for exemplary virtue.George Malcolm Thomson has set the scene:

In the early spring days of 1914 Caillaux was a
source of deep anxiety to President Poincaré. In May
there would be elections; popular sentiment was running
towards the Left. It would be difficult then to deny
Caillaux the premiership. Caillaux, who in his boundless
self-confidence believed he could strike a bargain with
Germany! It would be the end of Poincaré's policy of
rigid hostility to the power beyond the Rhine, of
intransigence which only just stopped short of
provocation. (The Twelve Days, p. 66)

Poincaré and his lieutenants devised a plan to wreck
Caillaux's prospects involving, not surprisingly, the press.
Le Figaro, directed by the formerly impecunious Gaston
Calmette, who enjoyed lavish subsidies from the Russians (he
left thirteen million francs in his will), began a campaign
to destroy Caillaux with these words on May 10, 1914: "The
decisive moment has now come when we must not shrink from
any action, even though our morals and personal inclinations
may condemn it."In short, the newspaper had acquired Caillaux and his wife's
love letters, written at the time she was his mistress.
Caillaux signed himself Jo-Jo, Henriette, Ri-Ri. The letters
were exactly the stuff that lovers have written one another
across the ages, confessions of volcanic passion, sometimes
in earnest, often believed, in any case never meant for
prying eyes.On May 16, when Ri-Ri cast her eyes on Le Figaro's front
page, she discovered that the first of her Jo-Jo's letters
to her was the day's feature story. It was mushy stuff: no
intimate details were spared. The paper announced the rest
of the letters would appear in forthcoming issues.Madame Caillaux threw herself into the arms of her husband.
Sobbing, she implored him, "Are you going to let these
journalistic hyenas invade our boudoir?"

She had no mind to let them. After being turned away from
an eminent Parisian magistrate, who shrugged his shoulders
and offered, "That's the price of being in politics," she
obtained a pistol, made her way to the offices of Le Figaro,
where, upon gaining entrance to Calmette's office, she
emptied all six bullets into her traducer.In point of fact, Madame Caillaux should have aimed higher.
The now defunct Calmette had been merely a hireling. As the
news of Ri-Ri's revenge spread through Paris, an agitated
Barthou rushed to his master in the presidential palace. As
Poincaré later described the scene to the journalist P.B.
Gheusi, Barthou collapsed on Poincaré's desk, terrified by
the fatal consequences of the articles."I'm the one who wrote all the articles against Caillaux!"
he exclaimed. "I'm to blame for the tragedy. I must punish
myself!"Needless to say, Barthou didn't punish himself. That's
seldom the way in politics. He would be a minister several
times over and remain the loyal henchman of Poincaré or
whoever happened to be his patron at the time.His wife arrested like a common criminal, Finance Minister
Caillaux had little choice but to resign. The opposition,
decapitated, posed no further threat to Poincaré's plans.
Thereafter, Caillaux was a figure of ridicule, even in the
streets of Paris. His wife's trial in July was a sensation,
as Henriette swooned in her seat like a heroine in a classic
tragedy. Her acquittal was anti-climactic. By July 27, 1914,
the day she was vindicated, war was a matter of hours away.

CHAPTER VI

Remote Conspiracies

For the first two weeks in July President Poincaré waited
patiently for his allies around the tsar to ready the
Russian forces for war. The vast distances and relatively primitive communications of Russia
made mobilization a more time-consuming business than in the
compact and well- ordered nations of Europe, and the French
leader was at first indulgent of the proverbial sluggishness
of the Russian bear.By mid-July, however, Poincaré had grown nervous. Anxious to
see how the Russians were progressing and determined, in
George Thomson's words, to "put a little steel into the
spinal column of that powerful but dubious ally," Poincaré
embarked at Calais on the cruiser France on July 15 for St.
Petersburg.Six days later he and his prime minister, René Viviani, were
received with the pomp only an autocrat can muster at the
Russian capital. At the tsar's summer residence, the
Peterhof, Poincaré acquainted himself with the imperial
family, particularly the tsar's four daughters, to each of
whom he presented a diamond wristwatch, all the while eyeing
them surreptitiously but calculatingly, mindful of the
salacious gossip revolving around their relations with the
sinister holy man, Rasputin.Poincaré presented the tsar and tsarina with Gobelin
tapestries and a set of gold fittings for the tsar's touring
car. Soon the French president and the Russian emperor were
in deep conversation, if the one-sided oration that the
sententious little Poincaré delivered as the tsar sat silent
and lackluster could be called a conversation.Tsar Nicholas II was no man to lead an empire. Lethargic and
vacillating by nature, under the thumb of his German-born
wife, Alexandra, his every movement was protected by
hundreds of guards, yet he had no one to guard him against
the venal incompetents and flattering toadies who formed his
official entourage. Goremykin, president of the council of
ministers, was good for nothing more than curling up on the
sofa with a third-rate novel, a cigarette dangling between
his cracked lips. Maklakov, the minister of the interior,
owed his prominence to his ability to amuse the young grand
duchesses with his animal imitations: he'd play the panther
and bound wildly about on the floor, while the girls cowered
and shrieked in mock terror.

The minister of war, V.A. Sukhomlinov, was another
dubious character, a compulsive gambler who was always in
debt. Shortly before Poincaré's visit he had given an
interview, "Russia Is Ready," widely published in the Paris
press, which sparked a flurry on the stock exchange which
Sukhomlinov was able to turn to his profit. One of his
numerous creditors was in close touch with German
intelligence.

The real powers behind the papier-mâché facade of the
tsarist court were other men. Russia's foreign minister,
S.D. Sazonov, had played the most important role in the
Balkan intrigues of the previous decade. Alexander Izvolsky,
formerly foreign minister and in 1914 ambassador to France,
played a diplomatic role scarcely inferior to that of
Sazonov. Then there were the grandees of Pan-Slavism,
clustered on the general staff and in the high command,
foremost among them the tsar's uncle, Grand Duke Nicholas,
commander-in-chief of the army.It was Sazonov with whom Poincaré conducted his most
important discussions. Sazonov, ably assisted by his
predecessor Izvolsky, had been and remained a hard
bargainer. Two years before, Poincaré had insisted that
France would not be drawn against her will into a war
originating in the Balkans. Poincaré had told Sazonov at
that time: "Don't count on us for military aid in the
Balkans, even if you are attacked by Austria." In August of
1912, Poincaré had reiterated his government's position:
"Should the occasion arise, we will fulfill our obligations.
Don't rely on us, however, to aid you militarily in the
Balkans, even if you are attacked by Austria, or if in
attacking her you bring about the intervention of Germany."
(Poincaré, Les Responsabilités de la guerre, p. 53)Despite these and numerous other warnings, all of them
calculated to insure that the outbreak of war be timed to
French convenience, in July, 1914 Poincaré found himself
dependent on the tsarist empire. The carefully laid plots of
Sazonov and Izvolsky had entangled the French leadership:
the road back to Alsace and Lorraine would indeed make a
detour through Serbia, at a heavy toll.Poincaré's conduct in St. Petersburg bore witness to his
acquiescence in the Balkan entanglement. He busied himself
in cheering up Serbia's ambassador to Russia, Spalajkovich,
whom he told, "Have no fear. Serbia has a warm friend in our
country." Spalajkovich, whose superior in Belgrade, the
secretary of foreign affairs, once commented, "I always
wonder whether Spalajkovich is more scoundrel than fool, or
as stupid as he is crooked," became the first Serbian
diplomat to learn of Poincaré's whole-hearted decision to
commit France to Serbia and Russia, come what may.The support for Serbia which the French leaders manifested
in St. Petersburg was accompanied with a show of hostility
toward Austria- Hungary. Prime Minister Viviani, while in
the Russian capital, sent a directive to all of France's
diplomats stationed abroad, which conveyed this statement
made by Poincaré: "France will not tolerate Austrian
interference in Serbian affairs."At a diplomatic reception given by Poincaré in the Winter
Palace, he made a shocking personal attack on the Austrian
ambassador to Russia, Count Szàpàry, in terms that "left
Count Szàpàry beside himself," as the Spanish ambassador,
the Count of Cartagena, would later write in his Memoirs of
a Diplomat.Even Poincaré, stung by the shocked criticism that
accompanied his diplomatic faux pas, later felt constrained
to offer a limp defense of his outburst in his book L'Union
sacrée, where he writes: "I pointed out to the ambassador
that Serbia has friends in Russia who would no doubt be
astonished to find her the target of harsh measures, and
that surprise might be shared in other countries that were
friends of Russia."At the very least, Poincaré might have offered his regrets
to the Austrian minister on the violent and brutal death of
his country's heir to the throne. The remark, coming as it
did at a diplomatic reception, testified not only to a
lamentable lack of self-control but also to a positive
willingness to give offense and provocation.

Besides his conferences with Sazonov and Izvolsky, with whom
Poincaré had worked very closely in Paris, both on matters
of diplomacy and more sordid business involving the
cultivation of France's biggest journalists, Poincaré also
met with Grand Duke Nicholas, commander of the Russian army.
The grand duke was a giant, six feet seven inches tall, with
a bearing as impressive as his height. Although well-known
for his brutality, he was immensely popular with the rank
and file, for, to the great delight of the muzhiks, he was
prone to administer savage thrashings to even the most
highly placed of his subordinates, or to deliver a swift
kick to the ample behind of an offending general, thereby
instituting a democracy of punishment that would be exceeded
only by Stalin's mass purges of the officer corps in the
1930's.Nicholas and his brother, Grand Duke Peter, were supported
in their Pan-Slavism by their wives Anastasia and Militza,
the fiery daughters of the king of little Montenegro,
Nicholas. King Nicholas, a perpetual moneygrubber whose
searches for a wealthy wife inspired Lehar's Merry Widow,
ruled a state linked closely to Serbia historically and
ethnically but which, under his rule, inclined toward
placating Austria.His daughters, heiresses to a long heritage of banditry and
vendetta, were as bold as they were enchanting. They laughed
at the toadying of the courtiers around the imperial family, and seemed always
to be spoiling for a fight with someone. During the French
state visit their preferred enemy was Germany, and the two
spitfires quickly wrapped Poincaré around their little
fingers.At the banquet which the French ambassador, Maurice
Paléologue, was giving the tsar and his president, Alexandra
and Militza themselves decorated the tables, setting
bouquets of flowers everywhere. Before the sullen Poincaré
they placed a gold candy box, which, when opened, proved to
contain a half pound of earth from his native Lorraine, the
focus of his ambitions for revenge throughout the course of
his career.To further stir Poincaré's blood, Grand Duke Nicholas staged
a great military review on the parade ground at Krasnoye
Selo. Together with the tsar they watched sixty thousand
troops swagger by, massive men, barrel- chested and
mustachioed, with shouts that evoked wolf packs bounding on
the endless steppe. The horses of the cossacks thundered by
as if maddened by vodka. Most inspiring of all for the
French president, the Russian bands filled the air with
French military marches - Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse,
Fiers Enfants de la Lorraine - until Poincaré was
transfigured with pride.At the end of the parade Poincaré ventured a prediction
about the Russian forces. "They will be in Berlin by All
Saint's Day," he forecast.As to Russian troops in Berlin, the little lawyer from
Lorraine was thirty-one years premature. Nor would the tsar
or his relatives command them. But Poincaré had allowed
himself to be convinced. Russia's five-million-man army
would sweep aside the Kaiser's severely outnumbered forces
and be watering their horses at the Spree in a few weeks.
And by Christmas, Strasbourg and Metz would be French again.

Now that Poincaré and his diplomats were set on war, they
would make every arrangement to camouflage the real
circumstances of its onset: they would temporize, tell
comforting lies, stage full-blown deceptions, even carry out
forgeries - all matters in which well-trained diplomats
excel when professional duty demands them. Such subterfuges,
of course, would be so discreet that very few would even
have an inkling of them; if worst came to worst, the
perpetrators would deny them in shocked tones.In this spirit, Poincaré, who left St. Petersburg for France
on July 23, denied having come to any understanding with the
Russians. According to him, "M. Viviani and 1 relaxed and
rested." Strictly speaking, he'd learned nothing new: "We
have no news, or practically none." As the historian Fabre
Luce wrote, "Poincaré acted the role of deaf-mute."The French president took great pains not to direct any
potentially incriminating memoranda to the Quai d'Orsay. As
the French delegation was preparing to board the France, while final embraces
were being exchanged, Sazonov had scribbled the text of a
final joint Russian-French declaration, then proferred it to
Poincaré. The Frenchman gave a start on reading the draft:
"The two governments have established a perfect
correspondence of their views and of their aims for the
maintenance of the balance of power in Europe, especially on
the Balkan peninsula."Poincaré wrote later in L'Union sacrée: "Viviani and I
thought the wording, in which there was no mention of peace,
would commit us too much to following Russia's policy in the
Balkans. Accordingly we modified the draft so as to
safeguard our freedom of action." (p. 279)This hypocritical claim, belied by his every action at the
time, Poincaré sought to bolster further by the claim that
during the all-important days just before the outbreak of
the war, "Everyone knew that M. Viviani and I were on the
high seas, far from both France and Russia."In politics, hypocrisy is a virtue. Unfortunately for the
politicians, history is apt to pursue them, and reveal their
self-serving stories and evasions for the lies they were.
Poincaré's efforts to cover his tracks were soon exposed.The British ambassador to St. Petersburg, Sir George
Buchanan, a staunch opponent of Germany and an intimate
friend of France's Paléologue, revealed Poincaré's secret
arrangements with the Russians in his memoirs. Buchanan had
learned of them from Paléologue shortly after Poincaré had
sailed back to France.Immediately after being apprised of the real situation,
Buchanan wired London that Poincaré would shield the Serbs,
that there was no longer any question of the French leader
acting as a check on Russian Pan-Slavists, and that the
French and the Russians had "solemnly ratified the
commitments of the alliance."On the same report Sir Eyre Crowe, assistant secretary in
the Foreign Office, wrote this summary: "The time has passed
when we might treat with France to keep Russia within
bounds. It is clear that France and Russia have decided to
throw down the gauntlet."

After Poincaré's departure Paléologue resumed his role as
the most important Frenchman in Russia. During the last ten
days of July he would carry out his role as master deceiver
in a virtuoso performance.Poincaré's last instructions to Paléologue, issued just
before the France weighed anchor, were explicit: "It is
imperative that Sazonov remain firm and that we support
him." These words have been documented from several sources,
most notably the records of secret Russian diplomacy which
the Soviets, in the first flush of their revolutionary
ardor, were so indelicate as to publish in Pravda in the
winter of 1917-1918.Despite his denials, Poincaré in fact maintained contact
with both Paris and St. Petersburg on his return voyage. According to
Paléologue, he himself had sent important information to his
president on board the France, and had received additional
instructions from Poincaré, including a telegram impressing
upon him the need to "give full support to the imperial
government."French historian Fabre Luce, in his outstanding
L'Histoire
démaquillée, summed up the facts of Poincaré's return trip:The travelers [Poincaré and Viviani] knew that the Russian
government did not envisage a Serbian acceptance [of
Austria's demands], which in any case depended on Russia,
and had decided to mobilize against Austria in the event of
an Austro-Serbian break in relations. Hence they knowingly
cabled St. Petersburg a renewed promise of support.
Poincaré, however, was bent on his role of deaf-mute, and
the archives of the Quai d'Orsay would be manipulated so as
to make it seem that communications with the outside world
were held to an absolute minimum."

Some months after the beginning of the war, the French
government would publish a collection of documents
purporting to demonstrate its own innocent conduct and
Germany's aggressive behavior in the period just before the
war's outbreak. In that collection, called the French Yellow
Book, there was more than one glaring omission, as would be
revealed after the war.Indeed, all the messages which passed between Poincaré and
Paléologue as the French president steamed back to France
would be either wholly or partially suppressed. Revealingly
enough, the entire text of the agreement between Sazonov and
Poincaré, in which Poincaré had gratuitously interpolated a
deceitful reference to their mutual desire for peace, was
missing from the Yellow Book. Fabre Luce remarks:

It is a curious thing that the telegram which,
because of that addition, might be taken by naive
readers as an indication of the pacific purpose of the
travelers, was omitted from the first Yellow Book
published by the French government. Was it done to make
people forget that Viviani's addition didn't at all
square with the policies actually followed during
subsequent days? Or to keep up the fiction that the
travelers had not been apprised of anything and had
taken no action?

Again, the critical telegrams which Poincaré dispatched
at Paléologue, ordering him to back the Russians to the
limit, are not to be found in the Yellow Book. Later the
French president would piously declare, "We know nothing of
any remote conspiracies," echoing Paléologue, who made the
brazen claim that since the head of state and the head of
government were at sea, and since they were only imperfectly
acquainted with the situation, they were unable to send him
any instructions.

This sort of manipulation of the truth would be followed
by numerous faked documents: texts of messages published
with compromising passages omitted, invented passages
inserted, and out-and-out forgeries. From the morning of
July 24, 1914, not a single official text, either French or
Russian, can be accepted at face value by a serious
historian, unless it has been subjected to the most
thorough-going scrutiny.The student of history, in dealing with the outbreak of the
First World War, finds himself inundated by a flood of lies
and circumlocutions. Needless to say, at the time millions
of naive people were led astray. Millions and tens of
millions still believe the official falsehoods, long after
they were revealed for what they were. Some of the most
glaring deceptions have gone almost unnoticed, due to the
vested interests of establishment politicians and court
historians, who have made untruth a weapon of state in order
to capture the masses, render them mindless, drive them into
collective hysteria, and then frustrate any possibility that
in calmer days they might learn from their mistakes and come
to doubt the word of the power elite.We shall learn how the story of the mobilization of the
various national armies has been distorted, and how in
particular the leaders of France and Russia faked the date
of Austria's and Russia's mobilizations, driving eight
million men to their deaths. It would not be until eight
years after that fateful July of 1914 that Poincaré, driven
to the wall by the League of Human Rights, would be forced
to confess that the document which he had flaunted more than
any other, the Austrian notice of mobilization, had been
faked. His retraction would not restore life to a single one
of the dead at Chemin-des-Dames, Verdun, or Tannenberg.

CHAPTER VII

Russia Mobilizes

It is a strange fact that Maurice Paléologue was charged
almost exclusively with the conduct of France's relations
with Russia. The French prime minister, Viviani, was also foreign minister,
constitutionally Paléologue's superior; while Viviani was en
route to and from St. Petersburg the minister of justice,
Beinvenu-Martin, had been appointed acting foreign minister.The truth is that Viviani had little authority. Poincaré
viewed his prime minister with hauteur and suspicion, and
often worked behind his back. Paléologue was contemptuous of
his superior, of whom he said, "Viviani doesn't have the
slightest notion of diplomatic affairs: he is as sluggish as
a dormouse and the most foulmouthed of all our politicians."
Shunted aside, treated with contempt, Viviani would go mad
and end up in an asylum.As for the interim foreign minister, J.B. Bienvenu-Martin,
he played an almost non-existent role during his brief
tenure. Abel Ferry, state secretary in the foreign ministry,
wrote of him in his Carnets (Notebooks): "The minister comes
in only forty-five minutes a day, and the mice do play."
While Bienvenu-Martin stayed away, and Viviani was
outmaneuvered, the foreign ministry swarmed with unofficial
"diplomats," operators such as Tardieu, who considered the
place his private preserve, wandering through the offices on
the Quai d'Orsay with an elegant cigarette-holder protruding
from his lugubrious fish-face.The most powerful diplomat on the spot was not Viviani or
Bienvenu- Martin, but the political director, Secretary
General Philippe Berthelot. He was scarcely a force for an
honest diplomacy rooted in mutual trust and conciliation: it
was Berthelot who edited the Yellow Book.

No sooner had the France left the dock in St. Petersburg
than Paléologue got to work. He invited Sazonov, the Russian
foreign minister, to have lunch with him at halt' past
twelve the next day, July 24. For the next three days the
two men would confer almost without interruption.At the luncheon meeting on the twenty-fourth, Paléologue
duly transmitted to Sazonov the secret watchword he had just
received telegraphically from Poincaré on the France: "Stand
firm! Stand firm!"The French minister was abetted by a second guest at the
diplomatic lunch. Great Britain's ambassador, Sir George
Buchanan, rivaled Sazonov in his enthusiasm for the Russian
cause. Far from being a dispassionate and neutral emissary
of Britain, Buchanan was a strong supporter of Grand Duke
Nicholas and his Pan-Slav ambitions. At the lunch, when
Sazonov and Paléologue urged him to support France and
Russia, he replied unhesitatingly, "You're preaching to the
converted."Sazonov, who had just ordered Serbia's Prime Minister
Pashich to reject Austria's sixth condition for a settlement
of the Sarajevo affair - that a joint commission of inquiry
be appointed - saw his hand immeasurably strengthened by
this strong intimation of official British support. He
stiffened his back yet more, urging Pashich that both he and
the Serbian regent should leave Belgrade immediately in
preparation for the hostilities. Pashich complied with that
demand quickly enough, sending his family to Paris
immediately.On the twenty-fifth, Serbia made her counterproposal to
Austria, accepting those demands which inconvenienced the
Pashich government and its Russian patrons least, but
turning down those central to the Austrian position. In
accordance with Sazonov's orders, Pashich presented a
counterproposal to the Austrian ambassador in which he
declared that his government was willing to punish the
culprits, but only after they had been proven guilty by an
investigation which involved no Austrians. Doubtless this
was an understandable position, given that Pashich knew full
well who had organized the assassination plot, and that he
walked to his offices every morning with the chief
conspirator in the Balkans, Russia's minister, Hartwig.As Pashich and his Russian mentors both knew, however, the
Serbian rejection of Austria's demands meant war.

On the same day that Paléologue, Sazonov, and Buchanan had
intrigued over tea, the Russian leadership, secure in its
knowledge of the Serbian response to Austria on the next
day, began to mobilize its ponderous armies. Sazonov laid a
plan for regional mobilization before the tsar that
afternoon, the twenty-fourth, which provided for putting the
troops of the Moscow, Kiev, and Kazan military districts on
a war footing.Establishment histories speak of Russia's mobilization as
having occurred a week later, on the thirtieth or
thirty-first. The earlier regional, "preliminary"
mobilization is dismissed as merely a defensive measure to
forestall a rapacious Austria bent on crushing little
Serbia. Generally glossed over is the fact that the Russian
fleets of both the Baltic and the Black Sea were ordered to mobilize as well. Clearly this
was more than a "regional" mobilization. The Black Sea was
far from any of the actors in the Serbian crisis, and no
canal linked the Baltic to the Danube.Clearly, the Russians were taking aim at a plum long coveted
by the imperialist ideologues of Russian expansion:
Tsargrad, Constantinople, Istanbul, the capital of the
Ottoman Empire, a plum long worth more to the tsarists than
all the plum trees in Serbia.By mobilizing in the Baltic, just as clearly, the Russian
expansionists were preparing to strike against Germany. By
mobilizing the Baltic fleet, the Russians were presenting
the Kaiser and his ministers with a provocation close to
unacceptable.

Tsar Nicholas II was not a perfidious man. He wouldn't have
hurt a fly, even if he had possessed the requisite energy.
But he was little more lively than a corpse. A close friend
said of the Russian ruler, "If you asked him an important
question, he seemed to fall into a cataleptic trance."Thus he was putty in the hands of advisers and ministers
like Sazonov. The foreign minister quickly prevailed on him
to endorse the plan for partial mobilization, which was then
approved by the council of ministers at Krasnoye Selo on the
twenty-fifth.The regional, or "partial" mobilization begun by this
decision was, in line with the military realities of the
day, anything but partial. Once set in motion, mobilization
proceeded according to fixed plans which couldn't be
altered, and was all but irrevocable. The tsar knew little
of strategy and tactics, and was blissfully unaware that he
had committed his nation to a course from which there was no
turning back when he complied with Sazonov's request.Even then, there were Russian troops who had been feverishly
set in motion weeks before the decision to mobilize on July
24, 1914. Twenty days before, the 60,000 troops who had so
impressed Poincaré as they strutted to French martial music
at Krasnoye Selo had been recalled from Siberia by the
general staff. The snows of Siberia had melted during the
brief northern summer. It was the boast of the general staff
that the Siberian troops would be in Berlin before the snows
returned to Russia's vast Asiatic expanse.

***

On July 25, Grand Duke Nicholas entertained at a grand
military banquet. There the Germans first got wind of
Russia's ruler's decision for war. General von Chelius, the
Kaiser's personal military representative at the court of
the tsar, had been seated beside Nicholas's chief equerry,
Baron Grunwald, an old friend. When the toasts were being
made, the Russian marshal looked gravely at the German, raised his glass to
him with deep emotion, and said, "My dear comrade, I am not
authorized to tell you what was decided at noon today, but
it was very serious."Then, placing his hand on von Chelius's arm, he added, "Let
us hope that we shall see each other again in better days."It was goodbye, then. The Russian officer could scarcely
have been more explicit. He knew that a war was on the way,
and he was taking leave of his friend, hours before the
Serbians would present their rejection to the Austrians.It was Grand Duke Nicholas who was the star of the banquet,
however. Before two thousand newly minted officers from the
military academy at St. Petersburg (all hastily commissioned
hours before), the Russian commander-in-chief put on an
exuberant theatrical performance, calculated to rouse the
Russian soldiers to a fever pitch of bellicosity. The hall
was flooded with joyous song, to the accompaniment of
glasses, emptied of vodka, being smashed on the floor in the
Russian manner.

Yet another Russian was rejoicing in St. Petersburg that
day. Alexander Izvolsky, who had schemed for a war since
1906; who had set another river besides the Seine flowing
into Paris, a river of gold; who had bribed and corrupted
the press, was on the scene to see his labor finally bear
fruit. He had returned to his capital to keep watch lest
Poincaré slow things down through any adherence to
diplomatic or legal formalities.He needn't have worried; Sazonov and Grand Duke Nicholas did
their work well. Now it only remained for Izvolsky to return
to Paris, to observe the final French preparations and to
stand ready to push the French leaders over the brink if
they showed last-minute signs of hesitation.On the evening of the twenty-fifth, Izvolsky boarded the
train for Paris. His French colleague, Paléologue, tossing
discretion to the winds, accompanied him to the station and
to his personal railway car. Izvolsky, square-faced, with
the features of a Kalmuck, beamed. With a triumphant cry, he
assured the Frenchman, "This time it's war!" Then both men
kissed each other in the Russian fashion, on the mouth.
Shortly afterward, the Russian ambassador's train set off
for Paris.

The next morning Paléologue telegraphed Paris to inform his
government that the Russian mobilization was under way.
Neither on that day - the twenty-sixth - nor on any
succeeding day did the French leaders remonstrate with the
Russians or seek to inhibit their actions in any way,
thereby supplying further evidence of the Poincaré
government's collusion with the Russian imperialists. Needless to say, the
Yellow Book's editor chose to omit this telegram from its
allegedly comprehensive documentation of the origins of the
war.For some years Poincaré believed that by eliminating the
incriminating evidence from the government's official
account of the events of July, 1914, he could wash himself
clean of any suspicions and accusations. His pedestrian
mentality failed to anticipate that the cataclysm he was
calling forth by his secret machinations might bring about
fundamental changes in the political order in which he had
learned to serve himself so well. Ten years after the war,
Sergei Dimitrievich Sazonov, the Russian foreign minister
with whom Poincaré had so cleverly arranged the war, found
himself in exile from his native Russia, which lay in ruins,
chastized by a more fearsome knout than any of the tsars
could ever have hoped to wield. The collapse of the old
order had left him with little appetite to cover up
Poincaré's doings, and in his Sechs Schwere Jahre (published
in English as Fateful Years) he revealed the truth about
Paléologue's telegram to Paris, and another historical lie
crumbled into rubble.

Izvolsky arrived in Paris on the twenth-ninth. The
telegram had preceded him, of course, and Poincaré was well
prepared to cooperate with the Russian ambassador when the
envoy presented himself at the Elysée Palace. The French
president was secretly delighted by the unscrupulous
measures the Russians had been taking to force the issue
with Germany and Austria. Poincaré craved war even more
ardently than the Russians. After two years of striving, he
was about to get his wish.

CHAPTER VIII

German Restraint

The Russian leaders had in the beginning believed, with no
small naiveté, that their mobilization could be carried out
in secret, affording their lumbering armed forces a week or
so extra in which to assemble the millions of draftees and
march them to the German and Austrian frontiers.Within twenty-four hours the word was out, scattered to the
four winds. The indiscretions had been numerous, from
Grunwald's hint to the German von Chelius at the banquet at
Krasnoye Selo to Izvolsky's indiscreet behavior at the
railway station. The newly commissioned young officers from
the military academy were less than reticent, and Grand Duke
Nicholas, his chest puffed out, was already playing the
braggart soldier to the admiring ladies of the Russian
capital.As the Bolsheviks were to demonstrate by their publication
of the Russian diplomatic archives concerning Franco-Russian
relations between 1910 and 1914, the tsarist regime
continued to mistrust its French allies down to the very
outbreak of the war. The offer of so much French gold and
blood in addition to the tsar's gaining mastery of
Constantinople, the Balkans, Ruthenia, those parts of Poland
in German and Austrian hands, and Bohemia as well, struck
the Russians as generous indeed, even if compensated for by
the rerun to France of Alsace-Lorraine.To make sure that France would not at the last moment
withdraw from her commitments, the Russians speeded up
mobilization to the best of their abilities. The faster they
moved, the more certain France's cooperation, but all the
more likely that word would reach the Pan-Slavists'
prospective enemies. And already suspicion was rising across
the border, in Germany.

On July 25, Kaiser Wilhelm was still at sea aboard his yacht
Hohenzollern, unaware of the Russian decision to mobilize
and the Serbian rejection of Austria's demands. In Berlin,
the German government was beginning to receive disquieting
news from St. Petersburg.Before that, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg had been slow to
credit the Russian involvement in the grisly affair at Sarajevo.
Although aware of Russian machinations in the Balkans, it
seemed to him inconceivable that the tsar would make common
cause with regicides.It was his predecessor, Prince Bernhard von Bülow, who
opened his eyes on this matter. With malicious delight, von
Bülow recounted the story of how in 1814 Tsar Alexander I
had urged Louis XVIII to find a job for Savary. The king had
said that that was quite impossible, since Savary had sat on
the revolutionary tribunal which had sentenced Louis XVI to
the guillotine. "Is that all?" exclaimed the tsar, "and I
dine every day with Bennigsen and Uchakov who strangled my
father!"At the beginning of July 1914, Bethmann-Hollweg had been
present at a conversation between the Kaiser and his
minister of war, General Falkenhayn. The general had asked,
"Is it necessary to begin any sort of military
preparations?"As we have seen, the Kaiser answered in the negative; "I am
completely opposed to that," adding, "Have a nice summer,"
after which he sent his minister off to the country.As Prince von Bülow was later to relate, on the next day,
"just as he [the Kaiser] was about to leave for Kiel and his
cruise to the north, he received representatives of the army
and navy general staffs and informed them that Austria was
going to demand an accounting from Serbia for the Sarajevo
murder, but that there was no reason to fear a serious
conflict, and it was hence unnecessary to begin military or
naval preparations."To be sure, blustering as was his habit, Wilhelm II had
fired off a broadside of bad names at the Serbs and
expressed the wish that Serbia be soundly thrashed for its
crime. Nevertheless, he had made clear that punishment was
entirely the business of the Austrians.Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg was a good deal less warlike
than even his sovereign. Even after he received word that
Poincaré was heading for Russia, and was informed of the
French press's far from hostile coverage of the Sarajevo
assassins, he did nothing. Sitting alone sphinx-like in his
Berlin office, he kept silent, reading his Plato, secure in
his belief that the war, if it broke out, would be confined
to the Balkans.

***

Nevertheless, some German officials became apprehensive
early in July. Count Wedel, a counselor to the political
section of the foreign affairs ministry, telephoned Berlin
from Norderney in the East Frisian Islands, where he was
vacationing, to ask if he should return to his post. He was
told that his vacation need not be interrupted; it was only
a false alarm, and everything would be all right.State Secretary Delbrück, also on vacation, grew
apprehensive ten days after Sarajevo. On July 9 he returned
to Berlin, and suggested to Bethmann Hollweg that it might be wise to set in motion the
contingency measures that had been formulated several years
before in the event of a threat of war. The measures include
big purchases of grain on the Rotterdam exchange, and
Delbrück urged this with particular insistence. Indeed, the
French had begun stockpiling flour as early as January 1914,
with special funds provided by the military.Bethmann-Hollweg remained calm in the face of Delbrück's
entreaties. "For Germany to perform the slightest action
which could be taken as a preparation for war would be out
of the question," he replied.Still worried, Delbrück had taken his case to the foreign
minister, Gottlieb von Jagow, and then the treasury
secretary, Kuhn. He was rebuffed each time, and finally
ordered to resume his vacation. He wouldn't return until
almost two weeks later.

***

It was Montaigne who wrote, "All the troubles in this world
arise from stupidity," yet Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg was
not a stupid man. Fluent in the classical languages, a lover
of Beethoven, he was a very capable administrator, with a
genius for paperwork. In the tangled thicket of intrigue
which surrounded the Sarajevo affair, however, he was
completely lacking in astuteness.Indulgent toward Austria-Hungary, he imagined that her
leaders would restrain their indignation and, if they
couldn't work out a settlement with Serbia, at least confine
themselves to a war limited in area and aim. Doubtless he
should have made very clear to the Austrian government that
Germany, sympathetic as she was to Austria's outrage, would
not allow herself to be dragged into a war over Sarajevo.
Bethmann-Hollweg should have communicated the fact that the
Kaiser's sympathy was that of a friend and of a monarch, not
that of a warlord or a geopolitician seeking to alter
fundamentally the borders and power relationships in any
part of Europe, including the Balkans.Yet the German chancellor let things slide during the vital
first three weeks in July, The Austrians prepared their
ultimatum, and the Germans, niether distancing themselves
from it nor supporting it, likewise neither prepared for war
nor for peace.

***

The revelation provided von Chelius by Baron Grunwald on
July 25 struck the chancellor's office like a bomb. More bad
news poured in. German sentries on the East Prussian border
reported the Russians tearing down their customs buildings
and uprooting barrier fences.From St. Petersburg came further word of military
preparations under way in Kiev and Kharkov. Grand Duke Nicholas had paraded his
cavalry from Krasnoye Selo through St. Petersburg. The
sixteen squadrons of Guards, Cossacks, cuirassiers, and
dragoons in full battle array made a fearsome sight, and the
thousands of trotting hooves, the bugle fanfares, and the
glittering regimental colors stirred the hearts of the St.
Petersburgers and the fears of the foreigners, at least
those who were diplomats from countries less than
enthusiastic about Russian imperialism.Germany's ambassador, Count Pourtalès, paid a call on
Sazonov."You are continuing to arm?" inquired the German diplomat."Just some preparatory measures... in order not to be caught
short. It's not a question of mobilization," responded
Sazonov."Such measures are extremely dangerous. I fear they may
provoke countermeasures from the other side," retorted the
German.In a few hours, news of this conversation was contributing
to the growing furor in Berlin. Bethmann-Hollweg was
panic-stricken when he realized that the enormous Russian
empire was readying for war. Galvanized to action at last,
on July 26 he sent a telegram to his ambassador in London,
Prince Lichnowsky, instructing him to call on Britain's
foreign minister, Sir Edward Grey, and ask him to intervene
immediately with St. Petersburg against a Russian
mobilization in any form.Bad show: Sir Edward had gone fishing that Sunday. It was
the season when the trout were at their fattest and most
beautiful. Grey had once written, "For myself I know nothing
which equals the excitement of having hooked an unexpectedly
large fish on a small rod and a fine tackle."Prince Lichnowsky caught nothing that day. He was forced to
wait until Monday to convey his chancellor's message.At the same time, another fisherman was spending the last
few hours of his yachting vacation at sea. Kaiser Wilhelm
was worried and angry. He considered the actions (or lack of
action) of his chancellor deplorable. He had finally been
notified of the developing crisis, but he still awaited the
text of Serbia's reply to Austria. Vienna had tarried a day
after receiving the note before informing Berlin of its
content. Von Jagow, the German minister of foreign affairs,
would only see the text on July 27, two days after it was
delivered to Vienna.Wilhelm II landed at Kiel on the twenty seventh, and arrived
in Potsdam on his special train several hours later. There
he met the hapless Bethmann- Hollweg and favored him with a
withering glare. The chancellor, stammering in confusion,
offered his resignation on the spot.The Kaiser coldly refused it. "You have cooked this broth.
Now you are going to eat it," he told Bethmann-Hollweg.

The next morning Kaiser Wilhelm had his first look at the
text of the Serbian reply, at seven o'clock in the morning. He was not
overly dismayed: he believed that the assassins had to be
found and punished, but it still didn't seem as if war were
inevitable.He learned that the British were considering proposing that
the Austrians occupy Belgrade until the crisis was resolved.
Far-fetched as that may have seemed, it still offered hope
that a solution short of all-out combat might be found.There seemed an additional ray of hope from Vienna. Kaiser
Franz Josef had let fall a remark which seemed to hold open
a possibility for peace. "After all," the Habsurg had said,
"breaking off diplomatic relations doesn't have to be a
casus Belli."Kaiser Wilhelm took just an hour to work out a plan for a
provisional peace between Austria and Serbia, along the
lines of the thinking in the British foreign office. After a
horseback ride in the park, he returned to his desk to write
down his proposal in more definite form. It called for a
temporary occupation of Belgrade by the Austrians, to insure
the good faith of the Serbs in rooting out the conspiracy
that had murdered Wilhelm's friend the Archduke.

CHAPTER IX

The Word of a King

Meanwhile, in Britain, opinion was mixed as to what to do
about the gathering storm over the Continent. The animosity
toward Germany which had been provoked by the rising German economic
challenge had not decreased, nor had concern over the growth
of the German navy and merchant fleet.Nevertheless, an important sector of public opinion and the
press opposed British entry into war, especially if Russia
might profit by it and be emboldened to strive for hegemony
in Europe. The Manchester Guardian prepared a powerful
editorial against the war, in which it stated: "We should
first of all have it definitely understood that if Russia
and France make war, we will not follow them."The Times saw the danger on another front. In a
clear-sighted prophecy that is now more valid than ever, it
admonished: "A general European war would guarantee that the
economic future would belong to the American continent,
particularly to North America."The threat of the supremacy of a massive and primitive
tsarist Russia, which Britain had felt compelled to oppose
on the battlefields of the Crimea sixty years before and
which it had warily confronted along the boundaries of its
Indian raj for several decades, occupied Britons more than
the distant threat from their American cousins, however.
Writing in the Times, Norman Angell predicted that:The object and effect of our entering this war would be to
ensure the victory of Russia and her Slavonic allies. Will a
dominant Slavonic federation of, say, 200,000,000
autocratically governed people with a very rudimentary
civilization but heavily equipped for military aggression be
a less dangerous factor in Europe than a dominant Germany of
65,000,000? ... The last war we fought on the Continent was
for the purpose of preventing the growth of Russia. We are
now asked to fight for the purpose of promoting it.With public opinion far from enthusiastic about a possible
alliance with Russia, the United Kingdom's politicians had
to tread lightly, even though the idea of cutting Germany
down to size had great appeal for them.

Despite Britain's long-standing ambition to control the
Continent, one can't very well claim that the British ruling
class was cut out to rule Europe by reason of its
exceptional superiority. The illustrious William Pitt, no
matter his accomplishments, and disregarding his sorry end
(he died at forty-seven from his penchant for tippling port
wine), can scarcely be compared to Napoleon.In fact, more than one British statesman has been noteworthy
for his lack of intellectual accomplishment, from the stodgy
Edward Grey, foreign secretary in 1914, to the much
ballyhooed Winston Churchill, an academic failure.At Balliol College, Oxford, Grey was sent down by the
Master, Benjamin Jowett, who wrote in the minute book, "Sir
Edward Grey, having been repeatedly admonished for idleness
and having shown himself entirely ignorant of the work set
him in vacation as a condition of his residence, was sent
down, but allowed to come up to pass his examination in
June."His academic redemption notwithstanding, Grey never achieved
a proper understanding of the nations of the Continent. Like
his people, he knew Europe only as a tourist, passing
through in his sleeping car enroute to India. He had set
foot in Paris just once, a member of King George V's retinue
during a state visit. He thought "foreigners" strange
beings, "terrible schemers," and once expressed the opinion
that "foreign statesmen ought to receive their education in
one of England's public schools."According to Sir Edward's lights, had Wilhelm II, Poincaré,
Nicholas II, Franz Josef, and even the redoubtable Pashich
been cast in the Etonian mold, Europe would have acquired a
sure harmony, particularly if each of the Old Boys had
rendered homage to His Britannic Majesty. As an English
observer wrote, "Sir Edward had the inborn conviction of the
nineteenth century Englishman that England's role in Europe
was that of a president who convoked conferences and cast
the deciding vote."This impeccable Englishman, with his umbrella and top hat,
who fished enthusiastically and catalogued the birds he
watched in his garden, was charming and agreeable in his
private life. But as a custodian of the Empire, he was a
different man, watchful and jealous of whoever might attempt
to raise himself to the dizzying heights reserved for
Britain alone. For him, in the end, British supremacy was
all that counted. The Irish, the Boers, the Highland Scots,
all of them and millions of others had challenged it at
their peril. Now, although Grey could never have recognized
it, this unique combination - breadth of power and
narrowness of outlook - for the first time became a trap not
only for Britain's rivals on the Continent but for Britain
and its empire as well.

***

While Grey was off fishing on Sunday, the twenty-sixth, his
interim secretary of state, Sir Arthur Nicolson, had invited
the ambassadors of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia to a
conference in which they could begin preliminary
conversations to defuse the Serbian crisis. By an amusing
coincidence, all three ambassadors were related, all of them
cousins: Mensdorff, the Austrian; Benckendorff, who despite
his German name was Russian; and Lichnowsky, a German with a
Slavic name (his father had had to flee Austria after a duel
in which he killed a Hungarian nobleman).Lichnowsky was an odd ambassador. He and his wife detested
the Kaiser, a fact which his wife had once confessed to Mrs.
Asquith, the wife of Britain's prime minister. Like his
cousins he was worldly and vain, and in fact had been
commissioned by the Kaiser to keep the British entertained
and diverted while the Reich built up its fleet.The three ambassadors were unable even to meet, for their
governments shared a mistrust of what the three cousins
might intrigue while meeting in distant London.
Nevertheless, the fact that the British government had
attempted to arrange such a conference, to the exclusion of
France, fostered a brief hope that all was not yet lost.In Austria, the most aggrieved of the great powers, there
was still sentiment for a settlement. The breaking off of
relations with Serbia had caused more fright than
enthusiasm.Count Berchtold, the foreign minister, was shattered by the
development. A contemporary wrote of him: "Berchtold was
perhaps the most frightened man in Europe that afternoon. He
had thought to terrify the Serbians. The latter, sure that
the Russian colossus, their secret ally, would support them
to the hilt in case of trouble, had not given in. It was
then that Berchtold became terror-stricken."

***

Meanwhile, a meeting between his brother, Prince Heinrich,
and his cousin, George V, at Buckingham Palace had given
Kaiser Wilhelm another straw to grasp at. The two royal
cousins had passed an hour that Sunday morning, during which
George had advised the prince to rejoin his brother in
Berlin without delay. When Heinrich asked the king what
Britain planned to do, George replied, according to the
report Prince Heinrich made to the Kaiser, "We shall try all
we can to keep our of this and shall remain neutral."According to notes he made of the talk, George V had a
different version of his answer:I don't know what we shall do. We have no quarrel with
anyone and I hope we shall remain neutral. But if Germany
declares war on Russia and France joins Russia, then I am
afraid we shall be dragged into it. But you can be sure that
I and my government will do all that we can to prevent a
European war.

Whether the two cousins misunderstood each other or King
George retreated from his word under pressure is difficult
to determine. When the Kaiser heard his brother's version,
however, he was transported, in George Malcolm Thomson's
words, "by sentimental and monarchical enthusiasm. Here was
something infinitely more significant and precious than the
huckstering of the politicians. The Lord's anointed was
speaking to his peer over the confusion and the turmoil. `I
have the word of a king!' cried Wilhelm. `That is sufficient
for me.' "Unfortunately for Europe, even if Heinrich had understood
correctly, kings and their word no longer had much weight.
Precisely the kind of politician Wilhelm despised, a man
slippery and ambitious beyond measure, was about to make his
debut on the stage of international affairs.

***

As Grey was returning from his angling expedition, Britain's
First Lord of the Admiralty was swinging into action. He was
a born swashbuckler, something of a fantast, who ever since
his adolescence had been on the lookout for strife and
mischief around the world, from Cuba to the Transvaal, from
the Sudan to the Afghan border. The smell of gunpowder
worked on him as an aphrodisiac might affect another man. He
was already quite a drinker and had something of a stammer.
His name was Winston Churchill.That Sunday morning he had accompanied his family to the
beach at Cromer. The news sent him hurrying back to his desk
at the Admiralty. Even before he left the beach he
telephoned Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord,
and asked him to order the British fleet in the Channel not
to disperse. In his office, brandishing a cigar, he drafted
a communique announcing to the world England's first
tangible intervention in the military preparations leading
up to the war. No German ships were in sight, nor did the
Germans have any plan to send their fleet into the Channel.
By this provocative gesture Britain had cleverly aligned
itself with France. As one of Churchill's supporters
exclaimed, "Churchill's orders to the fleet will surely be
understood in Berlin."Some men continued desperately to search for ways to stave
off war. Ambassador Lichnowsky telegraphed Berlin the desire
of the British government that Germany put a brake to the
Austrians.Wilhelm was receptive to the British request. He had become
convinced that Austria had carried its demands too far, and
in any case the revelation of an unbreakable Russian-Serbian
alliance made compromise imperative. He noted in his
journal: "Our loyalty to Austria is leading us to political
and economic destruction."

Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, however, could not break his
habit of temporizing. After receiving the British offer,
which was rather conciliatory to the Austrians since it
proposed that Austrian forces be allowed to occupy the
Serbian capital temporarily, he communicated it to the
Austrian foreign ministry only after some delay with great
reluctance.In this matter, perhaps Sir Edward Grey might be reproached
as well, in view of his reluctance to deal with the Austrian
foreign minister, Count Berchtold, directly. Certainly the
snail's pace at which Grey and Bethmann- Hollweg set about
trying to contact the Austrians for peace stands in sad
contrast to the speed which Churchill began mobilizing the
Royal Navy for war. Instead of the matter of minutes that it
would have been for the transmittal of Grey's vital proposal
directly to Vienna, the British proposal arrived there some
fifty hours after Serbia's rejection of Austria's demands.Bethmann-Hollweg managed also to sabotage a last message
from the Kaiser to the Austrians, delaying its dispatch for
nine hours on July 28 in order to insert changes that
enlarged the area to be occupied by the Austrians to include
neighboring territory mentioned nowhere in the British
proposal of two days before. By the time the telegram
arrived, night had fallen in the Austrian capital. Kaiser
Wilhelm's proposal would have to wait until the next day to
be read. Then it was too late, for Berchtold had already
decided for war.On the morning of July 28, Berchtold composed and sent this
note to the Serbian government: "The royal government of
Serbia not having replied in a satisfactory manner to the
note delivered it on July 23, 1914 by the Austro-Hungarian
minister at Belgrade, the imperial and royal government
finds itself under the necessity of safeguarding its own
rights and interests, and of resorting for that purpose to
force of arms. Austria-Hungary thus considers itself from
this moment in a state of war with Serbia."The effect of Austria's declaration of war in London was
disastrous for Germany. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Haldane,
saw the hand of the Prussian militarists, soon to be a
world-wide bogey, in Berchtold's act. "The German General
Staff is in the saddle," he announced.Sir Edward Grey, deeply angered, offered the opinion that
"something diabolical is brewing in Berlin," as much a
self-deception as it was a deception of the British people.In Berlin Bethmann-Hollweg was harshly reprimanded by Kaiser
Wilhelm. He was deeply shaken by Austria's declaration of
war, which he had in no way desired, despite his attempt to
toughen their position against the Serbs. On a diplomatic
dispatch which had been sent from London, he wrote:
"Austria's duplicity is intolerable. They refuse to give us
any information."

At three o'clock on the morning of the twenty-ninth, after
some hours pacing the floor in his office on the
Wilhelmstrasse, he drafted a telegram to his ambassador in
Vienna. He ordered him, very succinctly, "to speak with
Count Berchtold immediately and very emphatically."A serious war was still not inevitable. Sir Edward Grey
ordered his ambassador to call on Sazonov in St. Petersburg
and counsel moderation (a far quicker and more direct
approach than he had taken with the government of
Austria-Hungary.)Austria, for its part, was still floating trial balloons. It
would take fifteen days for the Austrians to mobilize. Only
then could they invade Serbia.Better than anyone, Wilhelm II knew there was time to
negotiate a peace. He attempted to appeal directly to his
cousin Tsar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg, at the very time
when Britain's ambassador was telling Sazonov, "1 have come
to implore you not to consent to any military measure that
Germany could interpret as a provocation."Sazonov was not to be so easily moved, however. He had been
conferring with France's Ambassador Paléologue for the
previous four days. Paléologue told him, "War may break out
at any minute. That eventuality should govern all our
diplomatic actions."Sazonov was only too happy to reassure the Frenchman. "Our
general staff is becoming impatient," he repeated, again and
again.

CHAPTER X

Damning Documents

The discussion which Poincaré had conducted in St.
Petersburg with the Russian ministers and generals had been
a good deal more than exhortations and flowery encomiums.
They had been extensive, detailed, and specific.The Russians sought sanction for their desire to stream
south to Constantinople, a move to coincide with their
crossing the Caucasus into Armenia. After that, they coveted
Jerusalem as well as the Suez Canal. The French would agree
to these aims, but not until 1917, a week before the tsarist
government fell.In July 1914, the French leadership had other ideas for the
employment of the Russian army. Although Poincaré did not
oppose the Russians' dreams of expansion to the south
outright, he insisted that the Russians launch a major
attack against the Germans in East Prussia, to pin down the
bulk of the German army far from French territory.Sazonov and Grand Duke Nicholas entertained just the
opposite notion. To them France's mission was to wear down
the Germans on the Western Front, so that Russia might have
a free hand in the south and east. Each side attempted to
conceal the selfishness of its own designs, and tried to
lure the other through affecting shows of magnanimity into
bending to its will. Neither was deceived.At the same time, the Russians were busy advising their
Serbian protéges on what to do when the war broke out. On
July 24 Sazonov conveyed several suggestions to the Serbian
ambassador, which were immediately telegraphed to Belgrade.
One recommendation was that the Serbians evacuate their
capital at once. Twenty years later, Pashich's son-in-law
Stefanovich published a photocopy of the telegram:Council Presidency, Belgrade, attention Pashich. Extremely
urgent. Secret. Outcome council of ministers held today, 3
hours, chaired by tsar, Krasnoye Selo. Stop. Sazonov charges
me inform you general mobilization ordered as agreed in
military districts Odessa Kiev Kazan Moscow with
mobilization Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Stop. Order sent other
districts step up preparation general mobilization. Stop.
Sazonov confirms Siberian divisions concentrated behind
Moscow Kazan. Stop. All military school students promoted
officers all officers on leave recalled. Stop. Sazonov asks
we draft reply ultimatum in very conciliatory terms but
categorically reject all points especially sixth [the one
that demanded a joint commission of inquiry] damaging our
prestige. Stop. Tsar desires immediate mobilization but if
Austria begins hostilities we must draw back without
resisting in order to preserve military forces intact and
await developments. Stop. Sazonov will have conference with
Paléologue and Buchanan in order to settle basis common
action and means furnishing us armaments. Stop. Russia and
France maintain attitude Serbian-Austrian conflict not local
conflict but part large European questions that only all
powers can resolve. Stop. Competent circles here express
great annoyance with Austria. Stop. Watchword is war. Stop.
Entire Russian nation eager for war great ovations in front
of legation. Stop. Tsar will reply personally telegram
prince regent. Stop. Spalajkovich. (Telegram order number:
196/8; date: July 24, 1914; references: Serbian diplomatic
archives, Council Presidency, signatures Pacu/Pashich;
cabinet 19, file 11/B, folio 7 "Petersburg", July 2-15 to
July 18-31, 1914).This telegram has been verified by two different sources. A
copy was also sent to Paris, as well as to the Serbian
legation in London. There the second secretary of the
legation, Petrovich, whose duties included decoding
messages, made a clandestine copy of it. Petrovich was
hounded by agents of the Serbian secret service until he
committed suicide, but not before he had handed over the
documents to a second party for safekeeping. Twenty years
later, the Petrovich copy was reproduced in facsimile in
London (Black Hand over Europe).Since the Serbian archives were never published in a form
like the French Yellow Book (and the various other
collections issued by the belligerents during the war and
after), either by Serbia or its successor, the Yugoslavian
government, authentication of the Serbian documents
published by Stefanovich, Petrovich et al, has been
difficult. The fact that a good-sized collection,
scrupulously indexed, was published by a leading functionary
of the Serbian ministry of foreign affairs, however, makes
it impossible to simply ignore the documents, as some
writers have attempted to do.During the 1930's in France, works which dealt with the
Serbian documents were promptly removed from circulation, a
condition which holds true today. Henri Pozzi's Les
Coupables (The Guilty Ones), for example, published in 1938,
became a best-seller and then disappeared seemingly without
trace. There isn't even a copy available in the National
Library in Paris, nor in the Library of Political Science,
where the critical study of potentially invaluable foreign
policy documents is surely a priority.If the documents are not genuine, let them be exposed.
Interestingly enough, however, when they began to appear in
France, the press fell silent. Only the Parisian weekly, Je
suis partout, and the very important political daily, L'Action francaise, devoted any attention to them.
André Tardieu, the press czar and Balkan intriguer who was
deeply implicated by the Serbian documents, maintained an
uncharacteristic silence on their publication. The great
French historian and former minister, Benoist-Méchin,
believed them genuine. Fifty years after they appeared, the
Serbian documents are more important than ever in unraveling
the web of conspiracy and collusion which unleashed the
First World War.Further transcriptions from the Serbian telegrams: Telegram
194/8, sent on July 22, 1914, while Poincaré was still in
St. Petersburg, by the Serbianminister to the tsar:President of the council, Belgrade (attention Pashich).
Extremely urgent, secret. Sazonov asks we intensify maximum
military preparations, but avoid any public demonstrations
before preparations completed. Stop. Sazonov negotiations
with Poincaré-Viviani very difficult. Stop. Both opposed any
measure or agreement capable dragging France into war for
French concerns or interests not involved. Stop. Attitude
President Republic toward Szàpàry causes immense sensation
official and diplomatic circles. Stop. Sazonov insists
France must now know military arrangements in process under
any pretext. Stop. Transfer Siberian troops Europe ended.
Stop. Mobilization large military districts will be ordered
immediately departure Poincaré-Viviani. (Reference: Serbian
diplomatic archives; Council Presidency. Sub/signatures
Pacu/Pashich, cabinet 19, file 11/B, folio 7: "Petersburg,"
July 2-15 to July 18-31, 1914.)Another telegram from Ambassador Spalajkovich to Pashich,
Telegram No. 197/8, shows how Sazonov made a point of
telling the over-inquisitive Paléologue a provisional lie as
long as Poincaré had not yet crossed the Baltic. It read:President of the council, Belgrade (attention Pashich)
-
extremely urgent - secret. Paléologue this evening asks
Sazonov whether rumors mobilization military district Odessa
Kazan Kiev Odessa and two fleets conform truth. Stop.
Expressed sharp displeasure if action liable to provoke
grave complications ordered unbeknownst France. Stop.
Sazonov issued formal denial. Stop. Confirms necessity you
avoid slightest indiscretion. Stop. Sazonov will inform
Paléologue immediately Poincaré-Viviani depart Scandinavia.
Stop. Notify Vesnich Gruich - Spalajkovich. (Reference:
Serbian diplomatic archives, Council Presidency, sub
Pacu/Pasic, cabinet 19, file 11/B, folio 7 "Petersburg,"
July 2-15 to July 18-31, 1914.)A third secret telegram, dated July 25, 1914, this time to
the Serbian ambassador at Paris, Milenko Vesnich, was sent
from Belgrade by the Serbian government to avoid, by request
of St. Petersburg, any indiscretion concerning military
preparations in progress. It read:

Belgrade, July 21-25. Serbian legation, Paris (attention
Vesnich). Extremely urgent-secret. Pending new instructions
withhold all information re: measures taken her or
Petersburg. Stop. Affirm situation serius but by no means
desperate despite violent ultimatum. Stop. Insist on our
profound desire conciliation and confidence in results
intervention great friendly powers. Stop. Absolutely
necessary public opinion French parliament be unaware all
military preparations here and Petersburg. Stop. In
conformance with the tsar's desire we are accelerating
mobilization have started transfer Nish archives, treasury,
official services. Stop. Evacuation Kragujevach arsenal
concluded. Stop. Inform Tardieu/Berthelot agreement Sazonov
reply ultimatum conciliatory form negative substance. Stop.
War certain. Stop. Urgent facilitate voyage London where
security Madame Pashich and Pacu family. [This telegram,
registered at Belgrade as the point of origin, under No.
432/VP/14, arrived at Paris "a little before noon" and was
registered under No. 291/3, BP 31.] (References: Serbian
diplomatic archives, Council Presidency, sub Pacu/Pashich,
cabinet 17, file 8/PV, "Paris" folio 9, July 2-15 to July
18-31, 1914)One of Pashich's colleagues, who was on a mission to France,
wrote an astonishing note demonstrating the degree to which
the Serbian government withheld information from the French
government while at the same time confiding vital secrets to
certain private citizens in Paris:Telegram 432/VP/14, received by Vesnich, the Serbian
ambassador, a little before noon on July 25, 1914, was
communicated by him in the afternoon to André Tardieu and to
the administrator of the Balkans Agency, Edgar Roels. When
Vesnich, coming from the Quai d'Orsay, entered Roels's
agency [then located on the Rue Tai bout], he looked like a
sleepwalker. His emotion was so great he appeared to be
choking."It's war!" Bochko Cristich said to me a few moments later,
"and sure victory for our two countries. Roels and Tardieu
told it to the minister."Bochko Cristich was a Serbian diplomat, an attaché in Paris,
who would later become Yugoslavia's minister at Athens.Besides the Serbian documents published by Stefanovich and
others, there have been other disclosures from the Serbian
side which have cast light on the activities of Pashich and
his government. Noteworthy among them have been the
sensational revelations of Ljuba Jovanovich, the former
Serbian minister to Vienna. Jovanovich, as a diplomat, had
access to the secret archives in Belgrade. Some years after
the war he revealed that Spalajkovich had sent a
supplementary telegram from St. Petersburg on July 24, 1914,
which included the words, "A drastic decision is expected at
any moment."Later the German historian Webersberger would publish a copy
of a scrap of paper written in Pashich's hand "noting the
registration of the guns of the Sarajevo conspirators and indicating the man
responsible for their conveyance: Tankosich." As was
mentioned earlier, Voya Tankosich was a personal agent of
Nicola Pashich.While the documents issued by the Soviet government after
the Revolution include a great many items damaging to the
tsarist claims of innocence in the matter of plotting for
war, there are a good many gaps in the record, particularly
pertaining to Serbia. While Russian designs on Istanbul and
thé Straits, the close relations and mutual deceptions of
Izvolsky and Poincaré, and the systematic bribery of the
French press are detailed by a wealth of documents, one will
search in vain for material on the intrigues of Hartwig in
Belgrade, culminating in the double assassination at
Sarajevo. Those documents are missing.There is a simple explanation. Between the revolution which
resulted in the Kerensky government in March 1917 and the
Bolshevik takeover in October of that year, a Major
Verkovsky had been named minister of war. This same
Verkovsky had been Colonel Artmanov's righthand man in
Belgrade, helping out with, among other things, the plot
which culminated at Sarajevo. With several months of access
to the Russian archives, he was able to eliminate anything
detrimental to himself.

***

Serbia and Russia had a rival when it came to doctoring and
suppressing official documents, of course. That was France,
where great efforts were expended to bring the diplomatic
sources into some kind of congruence with the official
propaganda.From the first telegram of Ambassador Paléologue on the July
25, 1914, the official texts have been calmly and completely
changed upon arrival. Historian Fabre Luce writes:The brief text in which Paléologue reported the Russian
mobilization was replaced with a fictitious text, accounting
for that decision as the result of the Austrian general
mobilization and German military preparations. The addition
underlines the fact that these justifications could not have
been given in the ambassador's telegram. And for a good
reason: at the time Paléologue sent his telegram, the
Austrian general mobilization had not yet been ordered.
(L'Histoire démaquillée, pp. 90f.)Luce continues:All that it took to reverse the order of the mobilizations
was one turn of the clock: then, without changing the hour,
a morning telegram had been turned into an evening telegram.
This falsification was done at the outset: the archives commission established that the register of the telegraph
service bore an incorrect time notation.The French historian further adds:The drafts of the telegrams sent during that period
frequently have corrections, excisions or additions, written
between the lines, usually in pencil and for the most part
in the same handwriting as the original. An examination of
the documents by the commission of archives indicated that
these corrections had almost always been made after the
event. Certain telegrams underwent curious delays, either
when sent or after arrival. The one that officially informed
Paris of Russia's general mobilization took nearly ten hours
to arrive at its destination. It was inserted between two
other less important telegrams which took, respectively, two
and four hours. So many precautions taken to dupe the
researcher at last call his attention to the very thing it
was intended to hide from him.Europe in 1914 was a minefield of diplomatic booby traps of
the French and the Serbs through which extreme care was
needed to pick one's way. Of the two, the Serbians were the
cruder, content simply to eliminate any document which might
cause them trouble.

CHAPTER XI

A Tsar Gives In

It was not until July 26, 1914, that the tread of marching
troops in St. Petersburg echoed in Berlin, when imprecise
rumors as to the tsar's decision to mobilize a million soldiers began to reach the
German capital.Bethmann-Hollweg immediately informed the British government
of his concern. In Vienna, two days later, the situation had
deteriorated still further thanks to the delay in the
arrival of the conciliatory messages of Wilhelm II and Sir
Edward Grey. The Dual Monarchy was rattling its sword with a
declaration of war that sober heads recognized was largely
rhetorical: it was still likely that all that would come
from it would be the dispatch of a few old tubs down the
Danube to lob a few shells at Belgrade, already abandoned by
the Serbian government at the order of their tsarist
masters. If the Austrian government really meant business,
the two weeks it would take to mobilize the Austrian army
would allow ample time for negotiations.The Russian Pan-Slavists, of course, had no intention of
seeing their carefully laid plans for a Balkan conflagration
thwarted. The idea that a last-moment intervention by wiser
heads might upset their plans filled them with fear and
rage.On July 28th Sazonov called on Tsar Nicholas and obtained
two ukases which he promptly forwarded to General
Yanushkevich. The first decreed the mobilization of the four
military districts of Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and Kazan, as
had already been provided for on July 24, 1914, and put in
motion by the Russian general staff. Now it had the official
sanction of the Russian autocrat.The second decree ordered a general mobilization, which
followed, as we have shown, inexorably from a partial
mobilization according to the planning of the general staff.
The tsar, who was as poorly informed about the military
strategy of his generals as he was about many affairs in his
realm, was unaware of this. He had been led, unwittingly,
into a trap from which he could no longer extricate himself,
a trap which would see him and his family slaughtered and
the Romanov dynasty expunged from Russia.

As everyone in St. Petersburg and Paris knew, mobilization
meant war. From the first day of the Franco-Russian Alliance
in 1894, this was understood.The statements of the principal actors in the drama confirm
it. General Obruchev, the Russian chief of staff at the time
of the treaty, said, "Our mobilization should immediately be
followed by acts of war."The tsar (at that time Alexander III) concurred: "That is
just as I understand it."General Boisdeffre, who represented France in the
negotiations, was equally explicit: "Mobilization is the
declaration of war."René Guerin, the great French intellectual and patriot, who
co-authored Les Responsabilités de la Guerre with Poincaré,
wrote: "If my declared enemy aims a revolver at me, and if I
know he is a good shot, I must conclude that he wishes to
kill me, that he is going to kill me. Should I wait until he
had fired to be certain of his intentions?"On July 28, 1914, the tsarist empire drew its guns. General
Dobrorolsky, commander-in-chief of the Russian mobilization,
was quite definite about it. As far as he was concerned,
from the reception of the order to mobilize the march of
events would be "automatic and irreversible.""I was called upon to set fire to the woodpile of the
world," he would state, without batting an eye.The tsar, when he had allowed his minister, Sazonov, to
extract the two mobilization orders from him, murmured,
"Think of the thousands and thousands of men who are going
to be sent to their deaths."He badly underestimated the coming slaughter.In Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm stood firm even as events hurtled
toward disaster, still refusing to accept war as inevitable.
No longer able to meet face to face with Nicholas, whom he
might well have swayed, as he did once before, he had only
the telegraph as his last resort. The tsar was now
effectively the prisoner of his generals and his ministers.
Behind them lashing them on, stood the French ambassador
Paléologue, egged on by Poincaré.The German leaders tried in vain to budge the emperors of
Russia and Austria. Wilhelm bombarded Austria's Franz Josef
with telegrams urging negotiations with the Russian
leadership. The kaiser sent similar messages to the tsar.Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg exerted all his powers of threat
and persuasion to convince his opposite number in the
Austro-Hungarian government, Berchtold, to accept England's
proposal that Belgrade be temporarily occupied by Austria
while the great powers negotiated a solution to the impasse.
He telegraphed his ambassador, Count Tschirschky: "We are, of course, completely prepared to do
our duty as an ally, but we must refuse to let Vienna draw
us into a worldwide conflagration, in disregard of our
advice. I urge you to speak to Count Berchtold immediately
and with great emphasis."Sixteen years later, Poincaré would acknowledge that
Berchtold had replied to this affirmatively, and that he had
been ready to waive compensation: when questioned by
Tschirschky, who had received his instructions, Count
Berchtold proved willing to declare that Austria made no
territorial claims." (Poincaré, Les Responsabilités de la
Guerre, p. 167)The message of Wilhelm II which reached Nicholas II at that
time was equally emphatic: "I am using all my influence with
the Austrians to get them to seek some basis of agreement
with you without any mental reservations."Even in Wilhelm's absence his entreaties made a powerful
impression on the tsar. Nicholas roused himself sufficiently
to quit his apartment and descend to the front hall, where
the only telephone in the palace was located. Mouth close to
the receiver, he ordered the chief of the general staff,
General Yanushkevich, to rescind the order for general
mobilization immediately, retaining only the order for
partial mobilization.Yanushkevich, reinforced by Sukhomlinov, the minister of
war, dared to call the tsar back to the telephone. According
to them, a "regional" mobilization would throw the army into
disorder, and make it impossible to carry out a general
mobilization, the only mobilization that could be of any
military value in the circumstances.The tsar's change of heart was all the more impraticable for
the general staff because the general mobilization,
unbeknownst to the tsar, was already under way. France's
military attache in Moscow, Captain Laguiche, had learned on
July 26th of Russian measures for mobilization in progress
as far west as Warsaw, and informed his government by
telegraph.By July 29th, the general Russian mobilization was being
carried out almost openly along the Prussian border. One of
General Dobrorolsky's reports noted: "In the Suwalki
district, which abuts the border of East Prussia, the
general mobilization had already begun." (L'Histoire
démaquillée, p. 66)During the night of July 29-30, 1914, there ensued a
crossfire of almost unbelievable telephone conversations.First the tsar himself, in a completely uncharacteristic
interference for that weak-willed ruler, had called the
chief of the general staff. Immediately afterwards Yanushkevich, instead of obeying his tsar, rang
up the minister of war, Sukhomlinov."What shall I do?" he asked the minister.Sukhomlinov replied immediately: "Don't do anything!"At the other end of the line, the chief of the general staff
exclaimed "Thank God!" The direct, personal order of the
tsar had been circumvented.The next morning, July 30th, Sukhomlinov lied to Nicholas,
informing the tsar that he had complied with the order to
cease the general mobilization and restrict the army's
preparations to regional mobilization. In fact he was doing
exactly the opposite.In 1917, when Sukhomlinov would stand trial for his numerous
failings, he would confess publicly that "the following
morning I lied to the tsar. I told him that the partial
mobilization was limited to the command posts of the
southwest."That morning it was also Sazonov's turn to lie to Nicholas.
He explained to his sovereign that Austria was already
carrying out military operations on Russian soil. This was
totally untrue, as Sazonov was well aware, but it was
needless to say highly persuasive to the vacillating
monarch. The tsar sent Kaiser Wilhelm the following pathetic
telegram: "I foresee that I am soon going to be overcome by
the pressure being put on me, and I shall be forced to take
extreme measures leading to war."Sazonov, pressing his advantage, routed the tsar from his
chambers, where he and the tsarina were tending their son,
the little hemophiliac crown prince. Tsarina Alexandra,
nerves at the breaking point, sought to counsel her husband
not to give in, for she loathed the Grand Dukes and their
Pan-Slavist obsession.Then Sazonov let fly the arrow that would strike this proud
but devoted wife and mother to the quick. He told her, "You
are asking the tsar to sign his own death warrant."This threat, scarcely veiled, had been confirmed by George
Malcolm Thomson, who wrote, "Nobody should put aside as
impossible any wild outcome of those feverish hours in the
tsar's palace by the sea." It was blackmail by threat of
assassination.The tsar received a final telegram from the kaiser: "My
ambassador has instructions to draw the attention of your
government to the serious dangers and consequences of a
mobilization. Austria-Hungary has mobilized only against
Serbia and only a part of her army. If Russia mobilizes
against Austria-Hungary, the role of mediator which you have
accepted in accordance with your express wish, will be
threatened, if not rendered impossible. The entire weight of
the decision now rests on your shoulders.

yours to bear the responsibility of war or peace. Willy."The burden of decision was crushing Nicholas II. His
evasions at an end, he now received the war party in is
office. Ushered in, they lined up facing the tsar, the
Minister of War, his generals, the civilian officials.Sazonov, speaking clearly and decisively, challenged the
tsar: "I don't think Your Majesty should hesitate any longer
to make the decree of general mobilization effective again."Again the tsar murmured his argument: "Consider that it
means sending tens of thousands of men to die."Sazonov: "The halting of our mobilization would upset our
military organization and disconcert our allies."Another imposture of Sazonov's, by which he implied that the
French would be shocked at the tsar's torpor and think that
he was violating the terms of their alliance. At that
moment, of course, Poincaré, just returned from his journey,
was playing the role of the innocent in Paris.Finally everyone fell silent. The tsar, eyes bulging, his
face a sickly yellow, made no reply. He stood motionless, as
if petrified.Suddenly General Tatishev broke the silence: "Yes, it is a
difficult decision."The tsar started as though he'd been slapped. He paced back
and forth, and then looked straight at his audience. "I am
the one who decides."And he decided. He ordered Sazonov to telephone Yanushkevich
that he was again signing a decree for general mobilization.Thomson has fixed the scene forever: "The tension in the
room broke. Sazonov rose, bowed, and almost ran to the
telephone on the floor below. He passed the order
triumphantly to Yanushkevich, adding, `Now you can smash
your telephone.' "

CHAPTER XII

Tragic Farce

At the very time when Tsar Nicholas was yielding to the
pressures of the war faction, President Poincaré was landing
from the cruiser France at Dunkirk early on the morning of July 29th. His return
trip to France had been occupied with laying a smokescreen
of alibis against any accusations that he was plotting war.Paléologue had delayed dispatching telegrams to Paris after
the proclamation of the Russian general mobilization, and in
some cases had refrained from sending telegrams at all, in
order to maintain Poincaré's facade of ignorance as to what
the Russian war party was doing. On July 26th Paléologue had
held up the transmission of the French attache, Laguiche's,
telegram reporting on the clandestine beginning of
mobilization.Nevertheless, when Poincaré was met by Minister Renoult in
the presidential train at Dunkirk, the president told his
minister, "It can't be settled peaceably." For someone who
claimed to have heard nothing for six days, he seemed
awfully certain.Poincaré's bald endorsement of war was in fact not a true
statement. Even as he spoke, efforts to calm the situation
were under way in Vienna and even in St. Petersburg. The
Kaiser's entreaties and those of his chancellor had begun to
sway Franz Josef and Berchtold. Count Berchtold had modified
his demands on Serbia and was now willing to consider
dropping the Austrian government's demand for a joint
Austrian-Serbian investigation into the assassination of the
archduke. According to Fabre Luce: "It was no longer a
question of mere camouflage. No! A note written in
Berchtold's hand shows that even on that day, July 30, 1914,
he was disposed to compromise on the Serbian investigation,
if Russia, on her part, accepted the provisional Austrian
occupation of Belgrade." (L'Histoire démaquillée, p. 75.)Sometimes danger has a calming effect. Never, perhaps, since
the crime of June 28th had the parties been so close to a
settlement.

***

When Poincaré arrived in Paris on the morning of the
twenty-ninth, he was met by a triumphal reception at the St.
Lazare station, one that had been prepared by his aides but
which was none the less fervent. Tens of thousands of
Frenchmen, stirred to a fever pitch by a chauvinistic press,
jammed the sidewalks along the route to the Elysée palace,
acclaiming the president as if he were Napoleon returned in
triumph from Elba. The crowd surged to the Place de la
Concorde to mass in front of the black-draped statues of
Metz and Strasbourg. Had Poincaré not been a staunch
Freemason, they might have offered him a Te Deum at
Notre-Dame Cathedral.He received a secular beatification in any case. Strange,
this excitement in view of Poincaré's protestations of
ignorance at the rush of events during his cruise; strange,
that patriotic crowds should heap acclaim on this allegedly
befuddled traveler. The man in the street, at least, had
instinctively penetrated Poincaré's alleged fog of ignorance
and loved him all the more for his imposture.But now the hour approached in which, after two weeks of
subterfuge, it would be necessary for Poincaré to strike the
final blow for war, all the while conveying the impression
that he had none but peaceful intentions.Immediately after his triumphal march from the station to
his palace Poincaré summoned three men to the Elysée: his
premier, the complaisant Viviani; Great Britain's
ambassador, Sir Francis Bertie; and the consummate
wirepuller from Russia, Aleksandr Izvolsky. The French
president and the Russian ambassador went to work on the
urbane ambassador from Britain, dressed like a banker from
the city with his pearl gray silk hat and his elegant
green-lined umbrella. It was a strange session: the two
long-time conspirators, Poincaré and Izvolsky, were forced
to disguise their joint machinations of the immediate past
while at the same time feigning an entirely false amity.The truth is the two men hated one another, as was to emerge
from their statements and writings after the war. Izvolsky
would claim that Poincaré was a liar who had deceived
everyone (he wasn't alone in his sentiments; Poincaré's
minister of the interior, Louis Jean Malvy, would describe
his former president as "an egoist, a double-dealer, and a
coward"). In 1922, before the Chamber of Deputies, Poincaré
would claim that every French minister knew he had never
trusted Izvolsky. He would also write, with something less
than veracity, "If T had been able to read the telegrams he
[Izvolsky] was sending his government, I'd no doubt have
noted many passages in them that would have justified the
instinctive mistrust that he inspired in us, in my colleagues and me." Thus the men who
had schemed together to corrupt public opinion in France on
one another!The British ambassador wasn't buying their cajolery. He made
no commitment. As always, he replied that he would refer the
matter to his government.It was at this meeting, however, that Poincaré gave Izvolsky
categorical assurance of France's support for Russia's
mobilization, an assurance for which Poincaré was to
sidestep the responsibility after the war. When the
collaborator on Poincaré's account of the origins of the
war, Guerin, asked Poincaré about the outcome of that
meeting, the former French president replied simply, "Ask
Malvy."Minister Malvy was well aware of what transpired at the
Elysée palace that afternoon. That evening he called on his
friend Joseph Caillaux in a highly agitated state to convey
the news, writing down the conversation on the spot.Malvy: "Russia asked us if we could mobilize. We answered
yes. We have committed ourselves to support her."Caillaux: "Then you are going beyond the conditions of the
alliance!" Malvy remained silent.Caillaux: "Of course, you made certain of England's
agreement?" Malvy: "There was no question of England." (The
British ambassador had left the meeting before the question
arose.)Caillaux: "Scoundrels! You have started a war!"The Soviet Black Book would include the text of the telegram
which a gleeful Izvolsky sent to Sazonov that afternoon
after leaving the palace: "France is in full agreement with
us!"It was that telegram which Sazonov used the following day to
overcome the resistance of the tsar to the definitive
unleashing of the Russian war machine.

***

Had Poincaré been sincerely for peace he might still have
restrained the Pan-Slavist warmongers around the tsar, even
as Kaiser Wilhelm and Bethmann-Hollweg were exerting all
their powers of persuasion to restrain their allies in
Austria-Hungary. Germany had no desire to go to war with
France, but the nature of the Reich's encirclement by France
and the mighty Russian empire made a desperate German
offensive against France a necessity if hostilities seemed
unavoidable, as they would if the Russians mobilized. Such
was the trap that Poincaré and the Pan-Slavists had laid for
Germany.Laying a trap for Germans was of course not an obligation
imposed on the French government by its agreement with the
Russian leaders. France's president, had he been willing,
might have declined to aid the Russians in their plot
against the Germans, just as the Russian government declined
to pledge its unconditional support to France in the Moroccan
affair two years before. At that time Izvolsky had indicated
to the French that "Russia remains true to her alliance
without question, but she would be hard put to persuade the
Russian people to go to war over Morocco. Moreover, our
alliance is only a defensive one." Or, as Tsar Nicholas had
expressed it to the French ambassador, "I don't envisage a
war except for totally vital interests."For Poincaré, however, the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine
was a vital interest, and provoking a German attack, which
would eliminate the need for troublesome debates in the
French assembly, was the way to attain it. His crafty,
stealthy maneuvering, carried out with the knowledge of a
handful of trusted political henchmen, was a marvel of
hypocrisy and efficiency on the Machiavellian model.
Poincaré would have his war, and Germany would bear the
brunt of the world's moral outrage.Poincaré's secrecy led to a night of comical and frantic
misapprehensions for two of his ministers. At a little past
midnight the French minister of war, Adolphe Messimy, was
awakened at his house. He had a visitor, and an obstreperous
one at that: Colonel Ignatiev, the Russian military attache,
who'd obviously had quite a bit to drink. The colonel was
bringing the official message from the Russian government,
one of thanks for France's support for Russian mobilization.
Rubbing his eyes, Messimy - still unaware of Poincaré's
assurance that afternoon - tried to conceal his
astonishment. He immediately telephoned Viviani, who replied
volubly."Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed. "It is evident that the Russians
are sleepwalkers and drunkards. I've just had Izvolsky here.
Tell Ignatiev to avoid fireworks at any cost."Was Viviani's astonished indignation genuine? Was the
premier oblivious to Poincaré's machinations and
Paléologue's activity in St. Petersburg? To be sure,
Paléologue's telegrams had been arriving late, sent by a
circuitous route to support Poincaré's claims that the
French government had been in the dark while Russia
mobilized. But one historian believes that Viviani's
amazement was a pose.Fabre Luce writes:He [Viviani] wasn't suffering so much from the annoyances of
being roused in the middle of the night as from finding
himself under the necessity of assuming the responsibility
that he had to avoid. What did "those Russians" need an
official confirmation for? Couldn't they take the hint that
the support given them unstintingly at St. Petersburg
remained valid? What blockheads! The telegram sent from the
armored cruiser, and the promise of support, renewed the day
before in Paris, wasn't enough for them then. Thoughts such
as these must surely have passed through the mind of the
president of the council of ministers, who was also the
minister of foreign affairs.

Viviani was handed a telegram by Izvolsky. It came from
Sazonov and included the words, "I express our sincere
thanks to the French government for the official declaration
that we can count on the full cooperation of our ally."But the telegram went beyond the terms of Poincaré's
muttered assurances to lzvolsky. It continued, "We have now
only to speed up our armament and face the imminence of
war." Clearly Viviani hadn't been informed of everything!
Off he hastened to the Elysée Palace, where the president of
France was in his turn routed from his slumber and forced to
dress hurriedly. Poincaré was in no mood to calm Viviani. He
snapped, "We'll take that question up at the council
meeting, in a few hours," and then went back to bed.Back at Messimy's residence, Ignatiev was demanding an
official reply to his minister's telegram, and, fortified by
inebriate impetuosity, refusing to leave before he got one.
Messimy, trying to temporize, told him the Russians would
have to slow down their mobilization. Ignatiev replied
vehemently, with an appropriate metaphor, under the
circumstances: "You don't mobilize by degrees, the way you
drink a cocktail."Fishing for a formula that would enable him and his
colleagues to evade responsibility, Viviani hit on the idea
of a "secret" Russian mobilization. He told Messimy to
inform the colonel that Russia should mobilize its southern
army corps provided France wasn't informed. To Sazonov,
Viviani telegraphed that France acquiesced in Russia's
"precautionary and defensive measures," thereby giving
Germany no pretext to mobilize. Again the French leaders had
played into the hands of Russia's warmongers.Fabre Luce had described the scene and its implications
well.Messimy and Ignatiev embrace each other silently, and the
Russian will later remark: "I was like a man who has a great
weight lifted from his shoulders." Apparently, despite all
the assurances received, he had wondered right up to the
last moment whether France, a country with a peace-loving
majority and a signatory to a defensive alliance, was really
going to accept the mobilization- aggression on the part of
Russia, and now, yes! The Rubicon was crossed.The French leaders made a choice, but they tried to hide
their decision. They played with the idea of a secret
mobilization, when ordinary good sense and the statements of
the Russians confirmed that it was impossible. Paléologue
knew it: a Russian document attested to it, but he pretended
to enter into the game and telegraphed, on the evening of
the 30th, that the Russian government has decided `to
proceed secretly with the first steps of the general
mobilization.' The government had quite simply proclaimed
that mobilization. (L'Histoire démaquillée, pp. 70f.)It was this French assurance of support that had enabled the
Russian ministers and generals to pressure theTsar, to
continue mobilizing against his order, and at last to cut
off his telephone so that he couldn't go back on his final
decision for war.

On the same night General Count Helmut von Moltke, chief of
the German general staff, was living through increasingly
anxious hours. He risked nothing less than the loss of the
war if he let the Russians steal the march and mobilize to
overrun Germany. Now everything indicated that their
mobilization was under way.The nephew of the great Moltke, Bismarck's right arm, victor
over Austria and France, this younger Moltke lacked the
temperament and willpower of his illustrious uncle. He
admitted, "I lack the power of rapid decision. I think too
much. I don't have the temperament to risk everything on a
throw of the dice."Outwardly the general cut a magnificent figure, as
impressive as Michelangelo's Moses, but he was at least as
much an aesthete as a fighting man. He read a great deal,
preferably weightier authors like Nietzsche and Carlyle. A
fervant admirer of the Flemish writer Maeterlinck, he had
translated that author's Pelléas and Mélisande into German.
He painted and played the violin, and, influenced by his
wife, dabbled in the murky waters of theosophy.Unlike other Germans, such as Count von Bülow, he feared
Russian expansionism. Moltke was traumatized by the
prospects of millions of hardy Russian serfs, their immense
realm stretching from the Memel to Vladivostok, inured to
privation and trained to blind obedience, falling like an
avalanche on a Germany already menaced by a powerful French
army, the two forces outnumbering the German army by four to
one.Moltke saw the Russian strength growing from year to year.
Russia's chief weakness, the poor network of transportation
and communications which served its vast territory, was
being steadily improved thanks to a massive influx of French
francs arranged by Poincaré. A major new railway network was
growing towards Prussia and in a matter of several years
would enable the rapid and orderly transfer of millions of
troops to Germany's Eastern border.As of July 1914, Russian military progress toward Germany
was still slow and cumbersome. Railway tracks and roadbeds
were still inadequate, and travel over them was slow and
jolting. The great majority of Russian troops would have to
advance over poor roads on foot. Nevertheless, Russian
measures for war had been progressing for weeks. The
Siberians had been called to European Russia, and the army
groups of the West were moving toward the frontier.Germany's only strategic plan, the Schlieffen plan,
anticipated forty days of fighting against the French, to be
carried out by the great bulk of Germany's armies. Only then
could substantial forces be shifted to the eastern front.
Every day that passed now eroded the Germans' margin of safety in the east. To the German generals, every day spent
negotiating with the Russian leaders, while the Russian
armies continued to mass and to move forward, brought their
nation closer to military disaster.

CHAPTER XIII

Death of a Pacifist

Each day the dispatches received in Berlin from the German
diplomats in St. Petersburg were more disturbing. On July
30, 1914, a telegram from the ambassador, Pourtalès, dispensed with all further
doubt. It listed, one by one, the districts in western
Russia where mobilization was in full swing.In the Warsaw district, at that time near Germany's eastern
border, and in Suwalki, on the threshold of East Prussia,
the progress of the Russian mobilization couldn't be
concealed. German spies and informers, as well as the German
consul at Allenge, stressed the imminence of Russia's
advance. Preparations were visible even from the German
sentry boxes on the frontier, across which the Russian
troops were hastily demolishing their border outposts, and
from which flames now blazed in the night.By that evening Moltke had confirmed from reliable sources
that the Russian mobilization was effective and total. The
next morning he telegraphed his colleague in Austria,
General Conrad von Hötzendorff:"Mobilize! Germany will mobilize with you!"Even then the kaiser was still seeking to steer Austria's
Franz Josef toward negotiation with the Russians. The
Austrian emperor's foreign minister, Berchtold, was confused
by the conflicting messages from Berlin."Who is in command at Berlin?" he exclaimed. "Von Moltke or
the Kaiser?"To be sure, von Moltke had temporarily exceeded his
perogatives. But on that morning Pourtalès had been able to
confront Sazonov in St. Petersburg with a public
mobilization poster. Time was growing short for the Germans,
and even Kaiser Wilhelm was losing faith in a peaceful
solution. The message of the tsar, that he could no longer
resist the pressures of his advisers, had reached him on the
30th, and Wilhelm had conceded, "My mission as a peacemaker
is over."Meanwhile, in Paris, Poincaré was about to be rid of the
last consequential French opponent of his war schemes. Jean
Jaurès, leader of the French socialists, and president of the Second
International, was a cultivated man. He was well versed in
the Latin and Greek classics, and had learned Spanish to
read Don Quixote in the original, as well as English to
tackle Hume and Shakespeare. A magnificent orator who,
despite his piercing blue eyes, hailed from the south of
France, he lived a respectable, indeed bourgeois life. He
had none of the venality which had enabled so many French
politicians to pile up private fortunes from their public
(and not so public) activities.On July 29th in Brussels, Jaurès had made a last effort to
stop the war by addressing a great convocation of socialist
leaders from all over Europe, gathered under the auspices of
the Second International at the Royal Circus, a vast stately
hall where this writer would address the Brussel's public
for the first time thirty years later. That day Jaurès was
particularly moving, for to him, the peace of Europe had
never been more menaced since the Napoleonic wars of a
century before.Great cries of "Down with war!" had rung out at the
conclusion of his speech, many undoubtedly from the same
throats that would a few days later give their passionate
assent to war in parliaments and national assemblies across
Europe. Jaurès left the hall with heavy foreboding despite
his tumultuous sendoff. He had time to see the Flemish
Primitives in all their splendor at the Brussels Museum
before catching the train to Paris.In Paris Jaurès proceeded directly to the Foreign Ministry
to try to exact a promise from Viviani that the government
would try to calm the Russians. When he learned that
Poincaré had just given full support to the Russian
mobilization, he warned Viviani:"You are victims of Izvolsky and of a Russian plot. We are
going to denounce you feather-brained ministers, even if
we're shot at."As Jaurès left the building on the Quai d'Orsay he
encountered lzvolsky. Staring him hard in the face, he said,
"This scum Izvolsky is going to have his war."That evening Jaurès read in a newspaper: "If France had a
leader who was a man, Jaurès would be put up against the
wall at the same time as the mobilization posters."Shaking his head, he said under his breath, "We must expect
to be assassinated at the first street corner."That same night a young man was snooping around Jaurès house
at Passy. When Jaurès approached with several friends, the
young man, whose name was Raoul Villain, asked an onlooker
which one was Jaurès. On learning, he slipped away into the
darkness.On the next morning, while the streets of Paris teemed with
demonstrators and frightened holders of bank accounts
(withdrawals of more than fifty francs from checking
accounts had just been forbidden), Villain searched for his
prey. Unsuccessful at Jaurès newspaper office, Villain
finally traced the great socialist leader to his cafe, the
Croissant.Then Jaurès sat admiring a photograph of a journalist
friend's granddaughter. The window behind his table was
open, only a curtain separating Jaurès from the street.
Imperceptibly a hand pushed the cloth aside. Then there was
a flash, and two shots split the air. Jaurès slumped over
his plate. A woman screamed, "Jaurès has been killed!," and
the last great opponent of the war joined those slain at
Sarajevo.The rumor ran through Paris that Jaurès had been shot by a
tsarist agent, forcing the government to blockade the Rue de
Grenelle, where the Russian embassy stood like a citadel and
where the Russian secret police, the Okhrana, had its Paris
headquarters (the Russian embassy today houses the offices
of the Okhrana's far more powerful successor, the KGB). No
evidence was ever produced that the Russian secret service
was behind Jaurès's assassination, and it is likely that
Villain, the son of a madman, a fanatical nationalist whose
mind had been inflamed by the stridency of the warmongering
press, acted alone. Nevertheless, his bullets were as
effective against the last great voice against the war in
France as had been those of the Russian conspirators'
hirelings against the archducal couple in Sarajevo.On the same day that Jaurès was gunned down Poincaré
succeeded in having Caillaux, his erstwhile opponent, who
had been brought low by Calmette of the Figaro, hustled out
of Paris by two policemen. Now the road to Berlin lay open.

CHAPTER XIV

The Lies of Politicians

The atmosphere in Berlin on the morning of August 1, 1914,
was one of deep gloom. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg paced the
carpeted floors of his office in long strides, scarcely
comprehending what was going on, looking at the future with
deep foreboding.According to Malcolm Thomson:As the evening wore on, gloom deepened in the Foreign Office
in Berlin. When Theodor Wolff of the Berliner Tageblatt
looked in he found a silence like the grave in the midst of
which diplomats brooded in the old-fashioned armchairs. The
old Hungarian nobleman Szögyény, who was the Austrian
ambassador, looked like one from whom despair had drained
the last drop of blood. Jagow [the German foreign minister]
padded in and out with a fixed, ambiguous smile.In Vienna Chancellor Berchtold was scarcely in a better
state. Impeccable as ever in his detachable collar and
cravat fixed with a pearl stickpin, he was stuffing himself
with sleeping pills. He had failed to detect the Russian
hand behind the Serbian conspiracy, rendering his bluster at
the Belgrade government less than useless. The German Kaiser
found his imprudence unpardonable. Would that he had watered
his fine Tokay wine a bit during that fateful July! It would
have been much better to be clear-headed. Now it was too
late: the Russian army would soon be crossing the borders of
Austria-Hungary.In St. Petersburg, the leaders of the war faction were
assailed by a last flurry of panic. The Great War was really
on. Sukhomlinov, the minister of war, was quaking in his
boots. He had set up a number of icons and votive candles on
his desk, and crossed himself frequently.

Perhaps alone in a calm state, Wilhelm II refused to order
the German army to mobilize, despite von Moltke's anguished
pleas. Although, as the Franco-German commission on the
origins of the war was to recognize in 1935, "the Russian
general mobilization created a new fait accompli that
urgently called for a German decision," it was not until
seven o'clock on the evening of July 31st that the Kaiser
went so far as to decree a state of Kriegsgefahrzustand, a "status of war alert," which was
still only a preliminary measure to mobilization.Kriegsgefahrzustand-a rumbling, ominous Teutonism, which
propagandists in France immediately seized on to conjure up
images of Hunnish hordes set to swarm across the border.
Their leader, Tardieu, who was fluent in German,
mendaciously assured the populace that the word meant that
the Germans had just declared a "state of war," unleashing
nationwide hysteria. How could France hesitate to fly to
arms, if Germany was already on the march?

Alone of the French leaders, Abel Ferry, under-secretary of
state, an honest patriot who would die in battle, had
recognized his superiors' maneuvering for what it was. In
his notebook he wrote: "The web was spun and Germany entered
it like a great buzzing fly."Kaiser Wilhelm was thinking along similar lines. On the same
day he reflected, "The net has fallen on our heads." Germany
had blundered into the trap. Fabre Luce would later write:"This whole history unfortunately leaves no room for any
doubt. France didn't enter into war following an obligation
of honor, as our rulers have often pretended, but, on the
contrary, in violation of the treaty of defensive alliance
which she had concluded with Russia, and of the republican
constitution of 1875."

On August 1st, at six o'clock, the German ambassador,
Pourtalès, called on Foreign Minister Sazonov to gain an
answer to Germany's plea that Russia halt its mobilization.
Sazonov replied, "Our mobilization must be continued. That
understood, we are prepared to continue negotiations."
Negotiating now, while continuing to mobilize, was only a
Russian means of playing for time.Pourtalès pressed the point: "I repeat, Excellency, will you
stop your mobilization?"Sazonov remained immobile, his eyes intent. Pourtalès
repeated his question, once, twice.Sazonov answered, "I have no other reply to give you."Pourtalès offered a sheet of paper in a trembling hand, then
began to sob. Germany had declared war on Russia.

In spite of everything the German ambassador in Paris, Baron
von Schoen, made a last offer on July 31st to avert war between
France and Germany. As everyone recognized, Russia unaided
would be no match for Germany and Austria-Hungary.The baron brought his government's final proposal to
Viviani: if France remained neutral, Germany would also
remain neutral. It would afterwards be claimed that the
German government had demanded at this time that the great
French fortresses of Toul and Verdun be turned over to
Germany as a guarantee of French neutrality, since the
French were later to decipher a telegram to Schoen to that
effect, but in fact the ambassador made no mention of such a
demand and the French were unaware of it at the time.Viviani's answer to the German ambassador had nothing to do
with the right and high principles with which French
spokesmen were wont to couch their official rhetoric. It
came in seven cold words: "France will be guided by her
interests." In this case, of course, France's interest meant
cutting her powerful German rival down to size and seizing
Alsace and Lorraine once more.Poincaré's public declaration was more in keeping with the
flowery hypocrisies of the Third Republic: "At this hour
there are no longer any parties, there is only France,
peace-loving and resolute; there is only France eternal;
there is only the Fatherland of Right and Justice."Right had a broad back, and Poincaré would ride it for
several years.

The day before, Austria-Hungary had attempted a last appeal
to the French government, presented by emissaries from
neutral Romania and Switzerland. Romania's Lahovary and
Switzerland's Lardy brought the proposal to the Quai
d'Orsay, where Secretary General Berthelot coldly rejected
it. "It is too late," he said. "It is no longer possible to
set matters straight." Later it would emerge that Berthelot
had not even bothered to transmit the Austrian proposal to
his chief, Viviani.Meanwhile the French generals, no less than their
counterparts in Russia, were pressing for a swift
mobilization. General Joffre reported that every twenty-four
hours' delay in mobilizing would mean a pullback of fifteen
to twenty kilometers - which would have left the French army
at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in a month's time.The generals shortly had their wish. At 3:45 p.m. on August
1st, Messimy, the minister of war, transmitted the order for
general mobilization to the deputy chief of the general
staff, General Ebene. Posters bloomed colorfully throughout
the cities, towns, and villages of France, as if an
electoral campaign were under way. It would be a landslide
for death.

Once again the Poincaré government would manufacture a
face-saving lie. Like their allies in Russia, who claimed to
have begun mobilizing only after Austria had begun, the
Poincaré government claimed that it was Germany which had
forced their hand by mobilizing first. The fact of the
matter is that the German order to mobilize came at five
o'clock in the afternoon, fifteen minutes after the French
order (Berlin and Paris are in different time zones).These lies would be told and retold over the years, sturdy
bricks in the edifice of German war guilt. Although Poincaré
would be forced to admit in 1923 that indeed the Russians
had mobilized before the Austrians , he would claim that he
had been honestly mistaken. Even so, standard works in
France, such as Bonifacio's Manual of History, the mainstay
of French students, continued to date Russia's mobilization
from July 31, 1914 forty years after the war.So it is with the lies of politicians, especially victorious
politicians. Their lying declarations command widespread
belief at the time; when, much later, rectification is made,
most people are no longer interested, especially when the
truth appears only in the thick and recondite works of
historical specialists.

In fact, so nervous was Poincaré about the prospect of
Germany not mobilizing at an opportune time for French
propaganda that he proposed to his ministers that France
contrive an incident on the German border. Although the
council rejected it as too provocative and dangerous, Malvy
revealed Poincaré's proposal after the war. As Fabre Luce
summed up, "At the beginning of August 1914, Wilhelm II, by
hesitating to attack France for the moment, was jeopardizing
the script. Hence the notion put forward by Poincaré to the
council of ministers to create a border incident, so that he
would not have the parliament discussing his interpretation
of the Franco-Russian treaty of alliance."

CHAPTER XV

A Sudden Zigzag

How came the emotion-laden final act. Millions of Russians
were under arms. Great masses of French plowmen and
mustachioed vinegrowers (at this time 47 per cent of the French were still farmers)
streamed to the railway stations, forming a great river of
olive drab. To the cheers of millions they entrained in
coaches daubed with "On to Berlin!" In Vienna, throngs
roared "Death to Serbia!," and the Germans of Berlin roared
their anthem with no less ebullience.Only Great Britain, among the great powers of Europe, still
wavered in official indecision. The government of Herbert
Henry Asquith was profoundly divided over whether to join
the revanchistes of France and the Pan-Slavist imperialists
of Russia or to maintain Britain's splendid isolation and
cultivate its far-flung empire. In the end, the British
leadership, blind in its lordly arrogance, would let its
short-term resentments over Germany's burgeoning economic
power prevail over its long-term interests in checking the
growth of the colossus which stretched from Warsaw to
Vladivostok.

Perhaps the key issue for the British leadership was its
consternation at the expansion of the German navy and
merchant fleet. This fear was magnified by Kaiser Wilhelm's
tendency to bluster, but in reality his bark was worse than
his bite. Britain's leaders might have learned this from the
American political manager and wirepuller, "Colonel" Edward
Mandell House, Woodrow Wilson's eminence grise, who talked
to Wilhelm while on a fact-finding mission in Europe at
Wilson's behest in June 1914. House, certainly no
Germanophile, reported that the Kaiser had impressed on him
with great urgency that he was building his great fleet not
to oppose England, but to increase German prestige on the
high seas, as well as to promote German commerce.Wilhelm stated: "I want peace, because the interests of
Germany require it. Germany was poor, but now she is in the
process of becoming rich; and a few years of peace will make
her quite rich."Great Britain's foreign minister, when communicated these
sentiments by House, was impressed by them. Grey admitted to House that
"the Germans need to maintain a navy that is proportionate
to the importance of their commerce and big enough to defend
themselves against a combined attack by the Russian and
French fleets." House doubtless also told the British
diplomat of Wilhelm's desire to end his naval construction
program after those ships under construction or already
planned were built.In the eyes of many Britishers, however, each German ship
completed was one too many. Nothing struck at the British
sense of self-esteem and self-preservation more acutely than
any perceived threat to British domination of the world's
oceans. Wilhelm hadn't the sensitivity and tact to recognize
that, as a far more clever player of the diplomatic game,
Adolf Hitler, did in 1935 when he conceded British naval
superiority vis-à-vis Germany.The traditional disregard of the average Briton for affairs
on the continent also weighed against the Germans.
Magnificently aloof, they paid little heed to the
implications of the assassination in Sarajevo, which, as
House brutally put it, aroused in Britain "no more stir than
a tenor singing in the middle of a boiler shop."In the end, it all came down to the hoary balance of power
game, by which Britain's rulers had promoted a divided
Europe, no matter what the cost to the West, for three
centuries. The clever, urbane, and slippery Grey drawled at
a cabinet meeting as the Sarajevo crisis heated to a boil,
"That would be a stroke of luck, having the Germans and
Slays go at each other." Prudently he had added, "The game
could become dangerous."A few voices warned of the dangers of the growth of the
tsarist superstate. House had pointed out the danger of a
too powerful Russia, as well as Germany's value as a buffer.
The Liberal leader, John Morley, one of Britain's most
upright ministers, was of like mind. He asked:"What would happen if Russia should be victorious in the
long run? Have you ever thought about that? If Germany is
defeated and Austria is defeated, it will not be England and
France that will occupy the first place in Europe. It will
be Russia. Will Western civilization get any advantage out
of that?"Stalin would finally answer that question in 1945.Despite the case for non-intervention, the Asquith
government was dominated by a fear of offending the regimes
of France and Russia. Grey neglected to communicate with the
Germans to the end of negotiating peace because, in his
words, "I prefer to refrain from sending any official
communication, written or verbal, for fear of offending the
French and the Russians, should either of them get wind of
the matter." He said it again to his cabinet: "England must
necessarily act with prudence for fear of offending the
feelings of France and Russia."

For fear of offending the members of a defensive alliance in
which Great Britain was unquestionably the key member,
947,000 men of the British Isles would go to their deaths.Kaiser Wilhelm's last, chimeric hopes for peace, with
England as with Russia, came down to the reigning monarch.
In Britain it was George V, Wilhelm's cousin, scion of a
royal family not noted for its powers of intellect. George
was a decorous mediocrity, timorous and a bit on the
deceitful side, a fragile hope to take a stand for peace,
particularly in a nation in which the powers of the
sovereign were so carefully circumscribed.We have noted the fiasco of George V's promise to Wilhelm's
younger brother, Prince Henry, stating quite plainly that
Great Britain would observe neutrality. Although Wilhelm was
beside himself with joy when he received the news ("I have
the word of a king!"), Churchill, as we have seen, already
had the fleet steaming for the Channel.On July 29, 1914, Grey sent for Germany's ambassador, Prince
Lichnowsky, to shake him with this message:"A European catastrophe is to be feared from one day to the
next. If the conflict remains limited to one between Austria
and Russia, England will be able to stand aside; if not,
England will no longer be in a position to remain neutral
indefinitely."He continued, "It is far from my thought to express a
threat. I simply wish to spare you a deception and to avoid,
on my part, the reproach of having been lacking in
sincerity."For all Grey's protestations of sincerity, he had sent
messages to all the embassies informing them of the virtual
end of British neutrality even before receiving Lichnowsky.That evening Asquith told his wife that he had dispatched
telegrams to all parts of the empire, informing the
governments and administrations to prepare for war. Wickham
Steed, editor of the Times, returned to his office from a
confidential cabinet interview with the words "Everything is
lost" on his lips. For the former prime minister, Arthur
James Balfour, the sight of passersby promenading down
Cockspur Street was a bitter one. "War is rushing down upon
them," he said to himself.

Wilhelm II received Lichnowsky's report of his conversation
with Grey with outrage, and unleashed a series of rich
imprecations against perfodious Albion. He quickly recovered
his equilibrium, however, and began to study what measures
remained to keep the peace. He knew of Russia's ongoing
mobilization, but Poincaré's maneuverings were as yet a
secret. His last card remained the unlikely intervention of
his cousin, George V.That sovereign was sleeping when his prime minister,
Asquith, asked to be received. The king, once roused, threw
on his dressing gown and applied himself to replying to his cousin's plea for neutrality in
terms with which his ministers could agree. The text of the
telegram bore a last hope for peace.The German ambassador reported to Berlin that Grey had
promised not to intervene if Germany did not attack France,
and asked for a German statement on that matter. Lichnowsky
informed his government that he had promised that to Grey,
as he had been authorized, and that Grey would communicate
the statement to the cabinet.A telegram is of value only when it is received, however.
Lichnowsky was only able to send it from London on the
morning of August 1st, after a ten- hour delay, and it
arrived in Berlin another five hours later. The wasted
fifteen hours seem almost certainly accounted for by the
delaying tactics of the anti-German faction in the Asquith
government and in the British Establishment. Nevertheless,
when the news finally arrived, it seemed a providential
opportunity to stave off war.Ominously enough, however, when news of the British
government's apparent reversal of policy was telegraphed to
the British ambassador in Paris, Sir Francis Bertie, the
ambassador failed to inform the French government. Bertie, a
supporter of Poincaré's policies, was in open rebellion
against his government. As the hours wore on, and the
telegram remained undelivered, the British government made a
sudden zigzag in its course, as it had done so often in the
past. This time it was George V, last repository of the
tenuous hopes for peace in Europe, who was thrown overboard.

CHAPTER XVI

Britain on the Brink

Kaiser Wilhelm received word of the offer of British
neutrality as he rode in a magnificent cavalcade from his
palace at Potsdam to the palace in Berlin. The Kaiser was resplendent in full
military uniform, his Junoesque wife beside him in the open
carriage dressed in a stunning purple gown. As the cheers of
Berliners resounded at the entrance to the palace,
Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and his undersecretary of state,
Jagow, rushed up with the telegram.Reading it swiftly, the Kaiser burst out joyfully, "Some
champagne! This deserves champagne!"Only one man in the palace restrained his enthusiasm. When
Wilhelm grasped him by the shoulders, and told him to halt
the army's westward advance, General Count von Moltke turned
white. He stammered, "But that's impossible! The entire army
would be plunged into frightful confusion, and we'd have no
chance of winning the war!"Indeed, it was true: a dreadful mess did loom. The
well-oiled German war machine was just springing into
action. Hundreds of thousands of troops were boarding trains
about to depart for the west. The conductors awaited the
final signal. Every station had its plan; every engineer his
precise instructions; the schedules had all been determined
long in advance. Now von Moltke had been ordered not only to
stop the movement westward, but to turn it completely
around: Germany's armies were to advance eastward against
Russia.Moltke's protests were unavailing. He told his emperor, "If
I can not march against France, I can not assume
responsibility for the war," to which Wilhelm shot back,
"Your uncle would have given me a different answer!" Moltke
was visibly disturbed; in the office of his aide-de-camp he
suffered a collapse. Nevertheless, he transmitted the
Kaiser's order to the vanguard of the German forces, the
17th Division, which was about to advance into the neutral
Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and cross into France.Before Moltke's order could become effective, several units
of the 17th's vanguard had crossed the border. It was seven
o'clock in the evening, and sixty German troops were seizing
the railroad station at the little town of Trois Vierges and
tearing out the telephone and telegraph facilities. Half an hour later, frantic German couriers were able to reach the
little advance guard and bring them back across the border,
after telling the harried Luxembourgers that it had all been
a regrettable mistake.

Could the fragile truce hold? That evening Wilhelm
telegraphed his reply to the British. He informed the
Asquith government and King George that while he could not
halt Germany's mobilization on either front, he would
refrain from attacking France if that nation pledged its
neutrality, to be guaranteed by the British.A few hours later came a crushing message from King George:
Britain's previous offer had been no more than the result of
"a misapprehension." The text ran:"In reply to your telegram which I have just received, I
think there must be some misapprehension with respect to a
suggestion made during a friendly conversation between
Prince Lichnowsky and Sir Edward Grey that afternoon when
they were discussing how an actual combat between the German
and French armies could be avoided while there was still
some chance of agreement between Austria and Russia. Sir
Edward Grey will undertake to see Prince Lichnowsky early
tomorrow morning to see if there is a misapprehension on his
part."Another stunning blow! For the second time in a matter of
hours, Germany's military preparations were upset. At seven
o'clock the momentum had been changed from west to east. Now
at eleven, the armies had to swing around ponderously toward
the west again.

The Kaiser, who had retired for the night, had to be roused
from bed. Sitting at the edge of his bed in his drawers, he
registered Moltke's embarrassment and threw a military
greatcoat over his shoulders. He told his chief of staff,
"Now you may follow your own counsel. March on Luxembourg."
The German army had now fallen half a day behind the French.Meanwhile, across the Channel, Churchill had taken it on
himself to mobilize the entire Royal Navy. Despite the lack
of authorization by the cabinet, Grey supported the First
Lord of the Admiralty. He confided to Churchill that he had
told the French that Britain would not permit the German
fleet to enter the Channel. All this while Wilhelm was
rejoicing at the receipt of George V's peace offer.

In overcoming the resistance of substantial sections of the
British public to an intervention in the war on the Continent, the British
war faction and French diplomacy had beaten some powerful
foes. Substantial interests of big capital, including the
Jewish investment bankers, led by the Rothschilds, were for
their own reasons not eager for British participation.
Liberal voices, particularly powerful in the press, were
strong in opposing any alliance with tsarist Russia.Yet the deft diplomacy of Poincaré, represented in England
by Ambassador Jules Cambon, had easily eclipsed that of the
Germans, just as Paléologue in St. Petersburg had relegated
the German Pourtalès to the role of a helpless onlooker.
Cambon was adept at stoking the vacillating Grey's fears of
the incubus of "Pan-Germanism," and he dared to stand up to
Grey when Grey tried to treat him condescendingly. Patient,
scheming, he was able to wheedle from Grey the critical
promise that Britain would permit no German ships to enter
the Channel.In contrast, Germany's Lichnowsky, a caricature of an
old-fashioned dandy, was ineffective and uninspiring, more
fit to take tea with the bevy of aging duchesses he and his
wife cultivated than to present forcefully his country's
policy to the British. Like his colleagues in Russia, he
wound up weeping at the outbreak of the war, while his wife
wept in the arms of Mrs. Asquith.

At the critical cabinet meeting on August 2nd, the Liberal
Lord Morley, the lord president, an opponent of war, had
laid his cards on the table at the outset. "Winston, we're
going to beat you, you know," he remarked amiably.Churchill merely smiled. He knew of Grey's promise to
Cambon, and he knew which way the wind was blowing. Then he
asked, "What reply should Grey have given Paul Cambon, the
ambassador of France, when he asked what England would do if
the German fleet attacked French ships or ports in the
English Channel?"One by one the ministers replied. Morley and his allies
spoke with little force, while Asquith, Grey, and Haldane,
the Lord Chancellor, made their arguments vigorously. One
after another, the Liberal opponents of the war backed down,
several offering to resign, while opportunists like the
crafty David Lloyd George calculated the benefits of a
reversal in their stand.By the morning of the 3rd, Morley had resigned, along with
three other ministers. Lloyd George, having "drunk at that
well of martial enthusiasm," in Churchill's phrase, stayed.
The cabinet opted for war, but not in high spirits. The
House of Commons remained to be convinced.Grey's speech before Commons on August 3rd was a masterpiece
of dissimulation. Feigning ignorance of the details of the
treaty joining France to Russia, he concentrated on the
alleged threat to Britain posed by German ships streaming
into the English Channel. He told the House:

My personal point of view is this: the French fleet is in
the Mediterranean. The coasts of northern France are
absolutely without protection. We can not stand aside with
our arms folded if a foreign fleet comes to bombard these
unprotected shores.

He then informed the Commons of his fait accompli of the day
before: the promise to Cambon. According to Malcolm Thomson,
"No one breathed a word. If anyone in that vast audience
listening to Sir Edward took exception to this moral
blackmail, he kept silent."Only Ramsay MacDonald, head of the Labour Party, future
prime minister, raised a doubt. "We'd offer him our lives if
the country were in danger. But he didn't persuade me that
it is."The session adjourned, with Great Britain on the brink. In a
few hours, there would be a new lure for wavering ministers
and M.P.s.

CHAPTER XVII

"The Most Colossal Folly ... "

The advance of German troops across Belgian territory would
furnish Liberal turncoats like Lloyd George with an occasion
for pious indignation that was typical of the British Establishment.
Britain's leaders well knew that Germany's only possible
strategy against France necessitated the violation of
Belgium's neutrality. Great Britain was no stranger to the
use of force and the abrogation of treaties to advance the
aim of its elite, everywhere from Ireland to Hong Kong.
France had violated or laid plans to violate Belgium's
sovereignty twenty times throughout her history.The man most concerned, Belgium's King Albert I, would lash
Poincaré after the war in these words: "I am most fond of
Mr. Poincaré, who continues to talk as though all the
overweening ambition and evil were on one side, whereas just
a few days ago he stated that it was only because of his
`veto' that the French general staff had not invaded Belgium
in 1914, and that he deeply regretted it!"In fact,
Germany saw herself hemmed in between two giants about to crush her. The
Manchester Guardian had enough courage to write on August 3, 1914:"We shall pass no harsh judgments on what a man or a nation
does when it's a matter of life or death."

However imprudent Kaiser Wilhelm II had been in his choice
of words, he had done everything in his power to avert a
war, while Churchill and his allies strove ceaselessly to
bring on a bloody conflict that would leave Europe
prostrate. At their behest, on the evening of August 3rd, at
seven p.m., Britain's ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen,
presented himself at Bethmann-Hollweg's office in Berlin and
demanded that Germany respect Belgian neutrality by
retreating from the country, on pain of war with Great
Britain.The next morning in London Lichnowsky received his passport
and the United Kingdom's declaration of war at one and the
same time. The document stated that the German Empire had
declared war on Great Britain, a complete misstatement of the truth, which brought
a hurried substitution of the corrected document for the
inaccurate one by a secretary from the Foreign Office.

On the 4th the
Manchester Guardian ran a full-page appeal by
the League for Neutrality on the theme: "Englishmen, do your
duty and keep your country out of an evil and stupid war."Mrs. Asquith noted that "Winston Churchill was looking very
happy." General Sir Henry Wilson predicted, "In four weeks
we'll be at Elsenborn.""Three weeks," retorted the French general Berthelot.Other predictions were being made by more perceptive minds.
Josiah Wedgwood prophesied, "You will see something much
more important than a European war. You will see a
revolution."Before the Russian Duma, an obscure delegate named Kerensky
cried, "After you have defended your country, you will
liberate it."In the far north of Siberia, on the banks of the Yenisei, a
convict laid traps for foxes and field mice in the snow.
Unknown to anyone in the West, he echoed the sentiments of
the leftists in the Duma: "The tsar's war will be the
proletariat's good fortune." His name, among
revolutionaries, was Josef Stalin.The men who would lead the "October Revolution" had left
Russia and were living abroad, watching and waiting. Lev
Davidovich Bronstein, alias Trotsky, was living in Vienna.
Warned by the Austrian Socialist Viktor Adler that he would
be interned the next day, he fled to Switzerland on August
3rd. He would soon be joined by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov,
alias Lenin, at that time holed up in Austrian Poland. Lenin
would spend most of the war living across from a sausage
factory in Zurich. From there he would set out in March 1917
towards world revolution and history.

The vast majority of Europeans gave little thought to the
possibility of political and social cataclysm triggered by
the war. The masses marched off to massacre with patriotism
in their heads and savagery in their hearts. Years after the
carnage, most of them would he no wiser. As the eminent
French Senator d'Estournelles would exclaim before the
International Court at The Hague in 1921, "Our public
opinion has been so saturated with official lies that people
can't wake up to the light and see the truth all at once.
They wouldn't believe it!"As early as October 1916, Woodrow Wilson would write, "The
singularity of the present war resides in the fact that its
origin and its objectives have never been revealed. History will have to
search a long time to explain this conflict" (Bullitt,
President Wilson, p. 280)But Wilson, too, would lead his countrymen lemming-like into
the carnage.

Naturally the victors had little desire to see the web of
subterranean maneuvers, and the brazen lies which they had
told in order to lead their peoples into war exposed. Nor
did they wish to see overturned the harsh peace they imposed
on the defeated, lest they be denied the billions of marks
in reparations they had planned to exact. "If the Germans
are proved innocent," asked Poincaré, "why should they want
to pay war damages?"Yet not long after the war a growing consensus of honest
scholars, from the victorious nations as well as the
vanquished, would give the lie to the claims of Germany's
exclusive guilt, which had been incorporated into the
Versailles Treaty, as well as to the pretense of French,
British, and Russian innocence. On his own country the
French historian Fabre Luce would pronounce the verdict,
"France isolated herself in a lie."

On August 4, 1914, the actors were all arrayed on the stage
of Europe, the just mingled with the unjust, the artless
with the false. First the tsar, hanging his head, glassy
eyed, and bedecked with ribbons-he was not responsible for
much; he was merely the front man of Pan-Slav firebrands:
the grand dukes, the Sazonovs, and a whole ruck of certified
scoundrels like lzvolsky and Hartwig. Beside the Russian
monarch, the oft grumpy tsaritsa in her wimple, the
fine-looking grown daughters afflicted with hysteria, and a
hemophiliac child, all of whom, buffeted by misfortune,
would, in 1918, pay for the Russo-Serbian trap of June 28,
1914 by being horribly massacred by a Bolshevik murder
squad.Opposite, in his plumed eagle-helmet, was Wilhelm II, who
had been more relentless than anyone in his efforts to
prevent war. He would be tossed onto the scrap heap of
history as a scapegoat, as a leper to be stoned and charged
with the crimes of the real instigators.In the background, artfully blurred by fog, the last one to
arrive was Britain's George V, who lacked nerve, standing
beside Churchill, who had it to burn, and who was scenting
battle as if preparing to enjoy a savory and sumptuous
repast.The massive Pashich, ever cautious, was hiding the revolver
of Sarajevo under his dirty beard.One lone Frenchman, the most brilliant of Frenchmen, the
future Marshal Lyautey, had started back, horrified at
seeing the ghastly spectacle about to begin."They are completely insane," he had exclaimed on receiving
the order from Paris to be ready for full-scale action. "A
war between Europeans is a civil war. It is the most
colossal folly the civilized world has ever committed!"The vicious treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany would
finally bring to the chancellorship of that nation, on
January 30, 1933, a volunteer infantryman of 1914. It would
raise him to power and bring on the sequel. That sequel
would be the Second World War, the accursed and ineluctable
fruit of the First World War.But before everything else there had been the two revolver
shots of Sarajevo. They destroyed forever an entire world.

The False "War of Right"

CHAPTER XVIII

The Road to France

On the fourth of August, 1914, several German uhlans, black
and white pennants fluttering at the tips of their lances,
crossed into Belgian territory. Their passage did not go unnoticed. In a nearby
thicket, a Belgian lookout hastily scrawled a few words on a
leaf from his notebook and then fastened his message to the
leg of a carrier pigeon. The bird took wing, circled the
thicket once, and then made for Liège. The First World War
was under way.The rival camps were secure in the belief they had
anticipated everything to perfection. Absolutely nothing,
however, would transpire as it had been set down in the
meticulous plans of the general staffs. The French would not
take Berlin, nor would the Russians. The Germans would be
denied Paris. Although each side lunged at its opponent,
sure of victory within two months, two months later the
Russians would be reeling beaten from East Prussia, and the
Germans and French would be digging the trenches in which
they would be buried for four years, amidst a sea of mud and
tens of thousands of rotting cadavers. From time to time
either side would mount an offensive, squandering hundreds
of thousands of lives on both sides, but the thrust would
peter out after a few kilometers.By November 1 the Russians, who had brought along their
dress uniforms for the triumphal parade through Berlin,
would have lost half their men. Their artillery would be out
of ammunition and much of their infantry armed with clubs
instead of rifles. Three years later, the austere,
aristocratic face of their ruler, the tsar, would be
replaced by the non-Russian features of Vladimir Lenin.
With the tsar would go the old order of Christian Russia,
submerged beneath a tidal wave of red flags.Before Sarajevo the Russian minister of war had smugly
predicted, "A nice little war would spare us a revolution."
In the end, it would be Lenin and his Bolshevik henchmen who
would spare the grand dukes their estates, the financiers
their profits, and the Russian people their freedoms.In Central Europe an identical revolution would come close
to succeeding. France would barely escape it at the time of
the mutinies of 1917. Germany would bear the brunt of the
Red thrust during the winter of 1918-1919, on the heels of
her defeat. The heart of Europe was on the brink of sovietization in those dark days, even as the victorious
opportunists of Versailles carved away at it.

Scarcely a man in Europe would have dreamed of such an
outcome on that sultry fourth of August, 1914, as the homing
pigeon winged off from the thicket, gray-golden in the
gleaming dawn, while the pennants of the invaders fluttered
over the yellowing wheat field in the last moments of peace.Germany, as she marched westward, deployed a powerful,
well-oiled military machine. The German strategy had been
mapped out, in all its particulars, with meticulous
exactitude. The German army would cut a long, straight
furrow across Belgium, then swing down to the south between
the Escaut and the Meuse, heading for the Marne and Paris.
The advance had been timed beforehand as precisely as the
stages of the "Tour de France" bicycle race. In thirty days,
the Germans would enter Paris and the Kaiser would sleep in
the palace at Versailles, while a million or two prisoners
would slowly make their way in orderly ranks toward the
receiving camps across the Rhine.The German armies were no stronger than those of France and
Britain opposing them. The myth of German military
superiority on the Western Front was laid to rest by General
Mordacq, the former chief secretary of Georges Clemenceau,
in his book Légendes de la Grand Guerre. The respective
strengths in August 1914 were as follows: 78 French infantry
divisions as opposed to 76 German; 4,582 French artillery
pieces to 4,529 German guns; 2,260 French machine guns
against 1,900 German. In manpower and materiel, neither side
possessed a decisive advantage.

The eastward advance of the French armies had glittered as
flamboyantly as the sun of those harvest weeks. At that time
I was a small boy, eight years old, and I can still see the
Bretons, the Parisians, the men of Provence marching up the
road from France. The road ran through the outskirts of my
little Belgian home town, Bouillon, along the Semois River,
and the wooded valleys echoed to the cadence marked by the
drummers marching eight abreast.One after another the units halted along the banks of the
Semois and set up camp under the plum trees. For two weeks
it was like a festival, as the cooks prepared french fries
without stint and the songs of Botrel, the great French bard
in those days, resounded on pianos brought from the houses
of the townspeople. Soldiers and civilians strolled under
the hornbeam trees along the river or danced the farandole,
devoid of cares.

Occasionally an officer would inquire about the mysterious
forests stretching east beyond our little valley. Despite
the fact that for years France's leaders had schemed with
the tsarist government of Russia to start a war against the
Germans, its army had no road maps. We children were given
the task of tearing the maps from piles of railroad-schedule
books, to which we applied ourselves conscientiously.But of what use would they really be? No trains crossed our
region and the maps indicated only the railroad lines, not
the roads; our region was represented only by a completely
blank space.We did little traveling in those days. The hill that bounded
our valley to the east was called the Point du Jour
(Daybreak). There our world began. The hill that closed the
valley on the west was named Le Terme (The End). There Our
world ended. Beyond was the unknown, the blank space on the
map. But it was there that the tens of thousands of French
soldiers who had been occupying our district since the
beginning of August would have to march to meet the Germans.
But no one gave a thought to the morrow; they sang, and
bathed in the river; it was a splendid vacation for the
French troops.There were two or three little alarms. On several occasions
a few uhlans were seen coming down through the thousands of
oak trees toward our little town. They quickly disappeared.
They must have had maps showing more than blank spaces,
because they used forest trails that were hardly known even
to our woodcutters. Germans stalking around, their pointed
helmets sticking through the branches, had to cause concern.
Why did they venture so far from their own country? The
broad expanse of the Belgian Ardennes and the entire Grand
Duchy of Luxembourg lay between Germany and us. Here they
were on our doorstep. Why didn't our Frenchmen go meet them?
What was war anyhow?

On August 15, 1914, we were witness to a great spectacle. A
German airplane had come to bomb the French troops camped in
our little town. We all rushed pellmell to a big tunnel
carved in solid rock under the enormous medieval castle
where nearly a thousand years ago Godefroy de Bouillon, the
leader of the First Crusade, had lived. Wide-eyed, we
watched the aerial bombardment from the entryway. A
fantastic sight-stones were falling from the sky and
ricocheting off the big blue paving-stones! Happy times
those, when a man was content to throw good honest stones at
his terrified enemy.The plot thickened. A French airplane appeared, one of the
140 France Possessed in 1914. I witnessed the first aerial
combat of my life. The German began firing a short cavalry
rifle, as did the Frenchman. They turned and flew at each
other again, firing their weapons, then swiftly turning round again. At last the rifle fire ceased,
ammunition expended, neither side having inflicted any
damage. The two heroes disappeared over the horizon. We
streamed back out of the tunnel proud to have witnessed so
memorable an event.Eleven days after the start of the war, things were
unchanged. No Belgian newspapers had reached Bouillon since
August 4. A few French officers had newspapers from their
country, however, and they summarized the news for us. The
Germans, the Intransigeant of August 14 explained, were
surrendering to anyone who gave them a slice of bread and
butter. Their cartridges and their shells were worthless,
never killed anybody. The Russian Cossacks were only five
days' march from Berlin, according to Le Matin. The Germans
were collapsing everywhere. The crown prince had committed
suicide. Forty thousand Prussians had been taken prisoner at
Liège alone.Would the war consist entirely of eating heaps of french
fried potatoes? Everyone seemed to think so in our little
valley.

Those first carefree weeks did not much square with the
morale that had stirred the French people for four years
before the war, the martially thrilling legend of
Alsace-Lorraine. Since 1870 their political leaders had
extolled offensive war, the "moment divine" of M. Poincaré.
Then came two weeks of peaceful vacationing. The French
officers en route to Berlin were not sending out
reconnaissance patrols; not once in fifteen days did they
conduct a single drill to keep the troops on their mettle.Since those days I have taken part in major battles in
Soviet Russia between 1941 and 1945, and I have commanded
important units. I still take my head in my hands whenever I
think of that war of my childhood, in 1914, in which the
future combatants were content to watch the war as if gazing
at trout streaming by from atop an old bridge.To have wanted the war so much, to have it within reach from
the beginning of August 1914, and then to sit crammed in a
valley lost in the depths of a great forest for two weeks!
What were they waiting for?On August 20, 1914, the great call to battle finally
sounded. Suddenly the bugles were calling the units to form
and move out. The Fourth German Army, under the command of
the Duke of Wurttemberg, had crossed the entire Ardennes,
advancing to within twenty kilometers of our dark valley.
Loaded down with enormous packs, our nice vacation friends -
fifteen thousand to twenty thousand of them - marched off
gaily to do battle in our mountains, officers in the lead,
armed with our useless railroad maps.For a few hours our little town of Bouillon seemed strangely
deserted and silent. Everyone watched the sky to the east.
That was where the Prussians had to be. That afternoon, the
heavy sounds of artillery fire began to rumble across the distant sky, like thunderheads rolling in.It was not until the following dawn that we saw the first
carts coming down fromood Ardennes followed. Wounded harvest wagons driven by g d d Frenchsoldiers, closely packed together, lay on the rough planks. Some of
them, for lack of bandages, had plastered dirt on their
wounds to stop the bleeding. Such was the ambulance corps of
an army that had been preparing for an offensive war for
forty years. There wasn't even a field tent to shelter the
casualties. The blood-stained survivors were unloaded in the
old municipal poorhouse, where there was nothing available
except our mothers' shredded linen. By nightfall several
thousand men had been crammed into the building. The wounded
less severely told how the enemy had cut them to pieces.The morning before, they had arrived utterly exhausted at a
village named Maisin. The Germans were waiting for them,
lying hidden right at the edge of the oak groves, sighting
down their machine guns. The French troops had charged in
their red trousers across the neighboring fields, the little
fields of our poor countrymen, surrounded by tight
barbed-wire walking wounded told how the enemy had cut them
to pieces.The morning before, they had arrived utterly exhausted at a
village dead would be buried in a common grave. Throughout
the length of the Ardennes, one the border of France, it had
been the same. The well-known writer, Henry Psichari, had
fallen in one of our woods, near Rossignol, sword in hand, a
rosary fastened to the hilt. Many bodies of wounded men who
had dragged themselves under the thick foliage before dying
would, years afterward, be found under the deep forest oaks.The French retreat was just as disorderly as the botched
combat. Late on the night of August 23, 1914 there came a
loud knocking on our door. I ran to my mother, who opened an
upstairs window. Soldiers were stretched out on the bare
ground, clear to the end of the street, as if they were
dead.A voice rang out-I can still hear it-almost beseeching, the
voice of a young officer."The road to France, Madame!"Neither he, nor his soldiers, knew the road back to France.No maps. No reconnaissance. Nonexistent communications.
Surrender. Fear. That was France in August 1914. A charming,
carefree, terribly chauvinistic people that, thanks to an
astounding lack of preparation, was brought to a frightful
state of emasculation. In one month, at the height of
harvest time, seven hundred thousand Frenchmen would fall,
dead or wounded.

Then a last-minute miracle-for it was a miracle-came: the
reversal of the Marne. The battle was impromptu and
makeshift, despite the careful planning of the General Staff in Berlin. It would save
Paris, from which IV Poincaré, his government, and five
thousand Parisians had already fled i panic.The retreat had been general on all fronts.On the Lorraine front, launched by Joffre on August 8, 1914
in application of plan XVII, the French troops had thought
themselves masters of Mulhouse, but the German Seventh Army,
hidden in the forest of the Hardt, had trapped them. Almost
surrounded, the French had no choice but to beat a retreat
with all possible speed. In the Saar and to the north of
Verdun, the French suffered an identical defeat.Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, had made a serious
mistake. He had underestimated German strength on the
western front by a third. Since the French had possessed the
detailed plan of the enemy high command, the Schlieffen
plan, for eight years, Joffre had no excuse. He hadn't
fortified the Franco-Belgian frontier to the northwest,
between the Meuse and the North Sea, where-as was set down
in black and white-the German army planned to storm through
in the event of war. In complete contrast, the efforts of
the French armies had been directed primarily towards the
eastern front, where the Prussian plan projected no
breakthrough.The obsession with Alsace-Lorraine not only addled the
thinking of Poincaré and the warmongers in his entourage, it
also befuddled the high command. Unprepared, poorly
commanded, and inactive for fifteen days while the enemy
hemmed them in on all sides, the French armies not onl:
suffered a terrible blow in the Ardennes, but at the same
time were cut to pieces in a second theater, between the
Meuse and the North Sea, in the great battle of
Mons-Charleroi.

General Lanrezac, a native of Guadeloupe, who commanded the
Sixti Army at Mons, showed himself a poor tactician,
although he had been professor of tactics at the War
Academy.He failed completely to understand the tactics of General
von Kluck, th( commander of the German First Army, who
should have been an oper book to him, as to Joffre, for the
preceding eight years. The Germans hac rushed straight at
Brussels, capturing the Belgian capital on August 14. The
Schlieffen plan then called for a great sweep to the south
in the direction 0! Paris. Clearly, the Germans would pass
to the north of Mons.The German Second Army, that of General von Bülow, attacked
a Namur and Charleroi on the same day. Lanrezac knew the
enemy's route it advance, and he must surely have been aware
that he risked being caugh between von Kluck and von Bülow
if he did not extend his formation to the left. Yet there he
was, on August 15, marching up from Phillippeville anc
Marienbourg towards the Sambre river and taking position
there as if the German Second Army were the only one in existence.When the battle began on August 21, von Kluck was able to
attack in an area virtually unprotected by Lanrezac, on his
left wing, where he was supported by no more than four
British divisions. By the next day von Kluck's army had
punched through to occupy Mons.A little later Lanrezac was outflanked at the outermost
point of his right wing, this time by von Hausen's Second
Army, which had leap-frogged across the Meuse. A few hours
later Lanrezac found himself virtually surrounded at
Mezières. He ordered a desperate retreat. Disaster was at hand."The fear instilled in me during the preceding days as to
the offensive capability of our troops in the field were yesterday
confirmed," General Joffre wrote to Poincaré.He didn't hide the reasons."We have no choice but to accept the evidence; our army
corps, despite their numerical superiority, did not show the
hoped-for offensive qualities in the field."General Joffre, at small cost, was clearing his own name at
the expense of his soldiers. Lanrezac had not had the
advantage of superior numbers at Charleroi. Joffre had
miscalculated the enemy's long foreseeable movement of three
German armies (von Kluck, von Bülow, and von Hausen) against
Lanrezac, instead of just one. Moltke had arrayed thirty
German divisions against fourteen French divisions, four
British and one Belgian (at Namur). As we have seen, the
Germans and the French disposed approximately equal forces
on the western front. The essential was that they be
deployed judiciously. Here, the error of the French command
was monumental.That was not the only explanation, however. In the battle of
the Belgian Ardennes, the French forces had enjoyed a
numerical advantage (160 French battalions against 122
German battalions), and they had nonetheless been routed
there, as elsewhere, and almost annihilated."Ineptitude of the commanders in handling their units. Lack
of troop training, absence of coordination between units
moving in parallel. These among many findings boded ill for
the future of the French army." That was the verdict of
historian Marc Ferro (La Grande Guerre, p. 96).

Thus it was on August 24, 1914 more than a hundred thousand
redtrousered corpses lay in the woods and amid the newly
harvested crops of the Ardennes and the area between the
Sambre and the Meuse.The survivors were taking to their heels."The road to France, Madam."As a million French soldiers were fleeing toward France,
four German armies swooped southward: the first through
Valenciennes, the second through Maubeuge, the third through Rethel, and the fourth
through Sedan. They were supported on their left wing by the
Fifth Army, which under the command of the crown prince, was
racing forward via Luxemburg and Longwy. In less than a week
the Oise and the Aisne had been crossed, and the German
First, Second, and Third Armies were across the Marne. Von
Kluck was only an hour away from a nearly deserted Paris,
which he disregarded, striking toward the southwest to join
up with the Fifth and Seventh Armies of Crown Prince
Ruprecht of Bavaria and General von Heeringen, which were
coming down from the Saar and from Alsace in the direction
of the Seine."In five weeks this whole business will be finished," von
Moltke declared at the end of August.Yet six weeks later it was he who would be finished,
dismissed from his post and morally shattered. The German
armies, after a headlong retreat, would hastily dig hundreds
of kilometers of trenches from Nieuport to Verdun, endless
cadaver pits in which they would stagnate for four years.Why all of a sudden, when there seemed nothing left of the
Gallic cock but a few feathers, was the German, eagle
exulting in its victories, checked at its zenith and then
pushed back?

***

The battle of the Marne, strange as it may seem, was not won
at the Marne, but two thousand kilometers to the east, on
the outskirts of a little German town named Tannenberg, in
East Prussia.There the Russians suffered a bitter reverse. But at the
same time that the Germans defeated the tsar, they defeated
themselves. Without Tannenberg, there would have been no
defeat on the Marne.First the dates: German victory at Charleroi, August 22-23,
1914; German victory at Tannenberg, August 26-29, 1914. In
the intervening three days General von Moltke would commit
the fatal error that made possible the French victory on the
Marne ten days afterwards.The entire German strategy rested, as we have seen, on the
elimination of the adversary in the west before facing the
Russian foe in the east. A two- front war seemed unthinkable
for Germany. France's army was equal in numbers to
Germany's, and the tsar had mobilized five million soldiers,
a figure that could be increased to ten million.The political and diplomatic strategy of France's Third
Republic for a quarter of a century had consisted precisely
of entoiling Germany in the dilemma of fighting two great
wars simultaneously-which would almost certainly mean losing
them both simultaneously. A Germany forced to dispatch half
of her forces to her eastern border should be defeated in
the west by the French, who had been excellent soldiers for
centuries. She was virtually condemned to defeat if she
faced the French armies outnumbered two to one. Even if Germany could sustain a two-front war a
rapid solution on either front would be impossible. A long
war would require raw materials which Germany did not
possess, whereas the French and the Russians did have or
could import them.The German high command, increasingly uneasy at the
burgeoning military strength of the Russians, and the growth
of their strategic network of railroads, thanks to French
loans, in the direction of Prussia, had come to the
conviction that it was imperative that Germany fight only
one war at a time.

***

The Russians first? Or the French first?It could not be the Russians first, because the Germans
would scarcely have penetrated the vast expanses of Russia -
ten thousand kilometers between the Baltic and the Pacific
Ocean - before the French deployed their forces against a
Rhine only half defended. The French mobilization,
facilitated by an exceptionally dense railway network, would
be completed, according to the general staff, in seventeen
days. Immediately thereafter, opposed by a greatly reduced
German army, the French, without much difficulty, might even
be able to reach the imperial palace in Berlin, as Poincaré
hoped, "by All Saints' Day." To von Moltke, allowing such an
avalanche to sweep down on the German Reich would be
suicidal.Should the Eastern Front be initially ignored? Should
Germany act only in the west, and not oppose the advance of
the Russians until mid- September 1914? Leave German soil
undefended against the Russian invasion except with a simple
screen of a few divisions during the six or seven critical
weeks? It would be necessary to break through and destroy
the French front in a matter of weeks. It meant taking a
terrible risk.The only factors on which Germany could reasonably count to
offset the danger were the immensity of Russia's territory,
her still inadequate railway network, and her miserable
roads. To transport several million men over thousands of
kilometers, together with their gear and enormous quantities
of war materiel, especially artillery, would take Russia a
month or more. By the time the Russian enemy was finally
ready, the German army, it was hoped, would have crushed the
French and could then be transferred in force to East
Prussia, or at least to the Oder river.It was with this scenario in mind that General Schlieffen,
chief of staff of the German high command, had prepared his
famous plan, which, unknown to anyone in Berlin, had come
into the possession of the French Army in 1906, thanks to a
traitor bought for sixty thousand francs. France's leaders
therefore knew the strategic implications of it exactly.
Fortunately for the Germans, this plan hadn't much concerned
the French command. Perhaps they hadn't believed it. The
plan was relegated by the French to a file of dusty old records.History is filled with such missed opportunities. It would
happen again in the Second World War: the French, Belgians,
and Dutch, informed in advance of the German offensive of
May 10, 1940 by an anti-Hitler general and by the Dutch
embassy in Berlin, would take no heed of the warning,
Stalin, told of the imminent German attack of June 22, 1941
well ahead of time by Churchill, immediately before by two
deserters, would take no account of the warnings. Hitler, in
turn, would fail to act on important, detailed information
furnished by the Turkish spy, "Cicero," concerning the
future Allied landings in France in 1944, information that
Churchill had passed to Stalin via the British embassy in
Ankara.Human intelligence often stumbles in the night imposed by
its blindness.

The lethargy of the French almost certainly freed von Moltke
from a grave risk in August of 1914.There was another problem, however: the necessity, which
seemed to him inescapable, of crossing Belgium to get to
Paris. The historical reality has been that ill-fated
Belgium has never been respected by anyone. The leaders of
the French Revolution and Napoleon attached no more
importance to her than to one of their assignats. General
Joffre himself had stated that a war against Germany was
inconceivable unless the French armies made a dash through
the Belgian corridor. In 1940 it would be the same with
Gamelin. In a way, Belgium forms an unavoidable passage. For
two thousand years the Belgians have been walked over by
Caesar's Romans, the Celts and the Germans, the Normans,
Spaniards, Austrians, the French, the Dutch, Wellington's
British, the Prussians of Blucher, the Cossacks of Alexander
I. Belgium is the warrior's gangplank.In August 1914, the Belgian gangplank was being crossed once
again. Each time, Belgium's invaders had produced good
excuses.Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, at the beginning of August
1914, was concerned enough about Belgium's plight to
announce to the Reichstag on the first day of the invasion
that Germany would make good any damage done. Which didn't
in the slightest prevent the British and the French-who had
done the same thing themselves a number of times-from
tearing their hair in hypocritical indignation.The Germans had a stern choice: either to ignore the rights
of the Belgians, or to blunt their offensive against the
French and lose the war. In scales weighted with the
destinies of such mighty nations, the Belgians didn't count
for very much.By invading Belgium so cavalierly (uhlans in the vanguard),
the Germans gave the Allies occasion to raise a great din of
propaganda. At the same time they allowed the British
imperialists to assign themselves the virtuous and almost
unheard-of role of defender of the oppressed.The only way the Germans could extricate themselves from the
political consequences was by a quick victory. At the end of
August 1914, everything led them to believe they would
succeed. The French had been in flight for a week. According
to von Moltke's schedule, he would be victorious as early as
mid-September; then he would be able to transfer his forces
to Potsdam or Königsberg and administer the final blow to
the Russians.

However hazardous this double plan was, it could have been
realized if the Russians had not begun to organize weeks in
advance with a pre- mobilization and if von Moltke had
proved himself equal to the task at the moment of great
decision.The bold stroke of the Germans in the west could only
succeed if the French could be conquered within thirty-five
days. By August 24, 1914 that victory was in sight. The
French armies had been beaten everywhere in less than three
weeks.In the west, therefore, the German strategy and tactics were
winning.In the east, on the other hand, and at nearly the same time,
expectations seemed to be unraveling. The Russians had been
astute. Their leaders knew, even better than the German
general staff, the shortcomings of their mobilization plan
and the slowness imposed by the distances involved. They had
also tried to shorten the delays by resorting in great
secrecy, as we have disclosed, to partial mobilizations in
advance.When the Russo-German war began in earnest they had
anticipated the Reich's generals by several weeks. The
Russian generals had brought their Siberian troops to the
West twenty-four days earlier.Moreover the Pan-Slavic clique had been hounded every day by
Poincaré, who wished to see their armies in combat even
before he had engaged his own troops in the Ardennes and at
Charleroi. He complained of a lack of collaboration by the
tsar regarding a single day's delay:"The Russian offensive which was announced for this evening
(August 13, 1914), and which was to contribute to the relief
of our front, was unfortunately postponed until tomorrow or
till Sunday morning." (Poincaré, L'Invasion, p. 89).The French president sent all possible intermediaries to the
rescue."Sir George Buchanan was charged with pointing out to
Sazonov that it was of the utmost urgency to support us in
the fight against Germany, with M. Doumergue and our general
staff stressing the same point of view."Because of such nagging insistence, and although they had
concentrated only a part of their troops at the border, on
August 14, 1914 the Russians entered German territory two or
three weeks in advance of their schedule. By the next day,
August 15, the Russian armies were already advancing deep into East Prussia. On August 20, 1914, they trounced
the meager forces of German General Prittwitz at Gumbinnen.

The situation was serious for Germany, because the German
troops in the East were very few in number. They constituted
only a fragile screen, nine divisions in all, scarcely a
tenth of the German divisions that, on that same day,
confronted the French in Belgium.The Russians opposing them, even though not at full
effective strength, were three times their number:
twenty-nine divisions. Even so, their superiority over the
nine German divisions was questionable. They had been thrown
into action too hastily; they were poorly equipped; their
commanders were far from military geniuses.That would soon be apparent; a week later, Hindenburg and
Ludendorff would annihilate them.Whatever the uncertainty of the moment after the defeat at
Gumbinnen, it was essential that von Moltke remain calm and
hold more than ever to the Schlieffen plan, which required
meticulous execution. Even if the Russians reached the Oder,
even if they conquered Berlin, only one consideration was
uppermost in the plan: eliminating, by using a maximum of
force, the French obstacle in the west. Then, and only then,
were they to turn back on the Russians, however far they had
come, whether Magdeburg or Munich. In war, the important
thing isn't avoiding retreat; the goal is to win the final
battle, even at the cost of temporarily giving up a vast
amount of terrain, or risking extreme peril. Strategically,
space is not a taboo, but a tool.For Moltke not to be alarmed at the news of the premature
Russian offensive, he needed to have nerves of steel. He
didn't have them. Unlike General Joffre, his French
counterpart, he was not a commander who remained unmoved
when the tornado strikes. In circumstances so
extraordinarily difficult, involving two enormous fronts two
thousand kilometers apart, William II should never have
entrusted such crushing responsibilities to an amiable and
philosophical esthete who had the shoulders of a solid and
invincible Prussian officer, but was hesitant, fumbling, and
filled with fears.When von Moltke received the unpleasant news on August 20,
1914 of the Russo-German battle of Gumbinnen-which was
actually more of a skirmish than a great battle-he was
completely unnerved. Although he had the victories of Mons,
Charleroi, the Ardennes, and Champagne well in hand, he
imagined Germany's situation a desperate one. Panicked, on
August 25, 1914 he took a totally inappropriate step: he
withdrew two army corps, the Eleventh and the Reserve Corps
of the Guard, from the wing of his armies advancing on
Paris.His colleagues warned him of the danger, because the two
army corps

The Rwere absolutely indispensable if the French army, in full
retreat, was to be annihilated.It would be noted instantly in the enemy camp."It is a grave decision and a gross error; the German
commander-in-chief is weakening the very armies he's asking
to make the decisive effort." (Renouvin, La Crise
européenne, p. 244).General von Moltke had already committed a grievous error
eight days earlier when he sent six reserve divisions to
Lorraine. At that time he should have put them in action in
support of his offensive forces in order to carry the
decision. In Lorraine he had no real need of them: the Fifth
and Sixth Armies had easily wiped out the French attempts to
advance and quickly turned them into a retreat.The second error was catastrophic. The battle of
Mons-Charleroi ended on August 23, 1914. The Germans were in
position to finish off the French in two or three weeks. At
the very important moment when it was imperative to strike
the final blow, von Moltke snatched 150,000 soldiers from
his offensive against Paris and sent them off in three
hundred trains in the direction of the Vistula on August 26,
1914.

Without Gumbinnen, there would never have been a French
victory of the Marne.Quite possibly, but the astounding fact is that the
diversion of those two army corps served no purpose
whatsoever. At the hour when the three hundred trains
departed, the Russians were being utterly destroyed. The
dates are startling. On August 26 Moltke gave the order for
the two army corps to depart for the east; on the following
day, August 27, more than a thousand kilometers from the
railway platforms of Belgium, the battle between the
Russians and Germans at Tannenberg took place. And what a
battle! In three days, Hindenburg and Lundendorff totally
annihilated the Russian army of Samsonov, which was three
times larger than their own forces. It was a total rout:
tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were killed, 92,000
taken prisoner, 350 cannon captured. Samsonov, the Russian
commander-in-chief, was so crushed militarily and in spirit
that he committed suicide.Thus not a single one of the 150,000 German soldiers
redirected by von Moltke from the offensive in France to
east Prussia took part at Tannenberg. On that fateful day
their 300 trains were still chugging through the Belgian
province of Hainaut. Their absence would be fateful when the
First and Second Armies, weakened by that enormous levy,
would hold the fate of the war in their hands a few days
later southeast of Paris.

CHAPTER XIX

Feet of Clay

General von Bülow (a member of an extraordinary family of
diplomats and military men: more than one hundred Billows
would take part in the war, and seventy percent of them would be killed or
wounded) and General von Kluck continued to pursue the
fleeing French at full speed. However, von Kluck, suddenly
stripped of 150,000 elite troops, had to rein in his right
flank, which would have swept to Pontoise, to the west of
Paris, between the French capital and the Atlantic. He
pulled back towards Meaux, to the east of Paris, where it
was still entirely possible that, once across the Marne, he
might link up with the German Sixth and Seventh Armies to
General Joffre's rear.

The Germans advanced on all fronts for some days. Almost
immediately after the German victory at Charleroi on August
26, the First British Army Corps was severely beaten at Le
Cateau by von Kluck. On August 29, 1914, the defeated
Lanrezac tried courageously to aid the fleeing British, but
the latter demurred. They had suffered terrible losses:
100,000 men in one month. Now the British wanted only to
return by forced marches to the ports of Dunkirk and Calais.An old habit: at Waterloo, when Wellington was in doubt as
to whether he could repel Napoleon's attack, he prepared for
a retreat through the forest of Soignies, between the
battlefield and Brussels, and had already sent relays ahead
to the northwest in order to be able to reembark his army
without too much disorder if the emperor won the day.Similarly the British commander, Marshal French, in the days
of August 1914, felt a raging desire to cut and run. He was
more drawn to London fogs than to spiked helmets.Ferro, the historian, tells us (La Grande Guerre, p. 104):
"French wished to save what was left of his army; and,
judging the French [marshals] incapable of pulling
themselves together, he had thought of reembarking."It was with difficulty that Lanrezac coaxed the British
troops back into the retreating columns.

Meanwhile, General von Kluck had reached Noyon. He was
advancing on Ferté-Milon and on Compiègne. By August 31 he
was very close to cornering the French armies southeast of
Paris. He had passed the valley of the Ourcq and reached
Chateau-Thierry, pressing hard on the heels of the French,
who crossed the bridges of the Marne before him, barely
escaping him. In one week the armies of von Kluck and von
Bülow had reached the heart of France, on foot, because
troops at that time still had to rely on their legs to get
any place while campaigning.Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers had taken the
crossings of the Aisne and the Vesle at bayonet point
beneath the hot August sun. They had come, as Corneille had
once said, "to the verge of a total victory," just a few
tens of kilometers from Paris. Their eyes sparkled with joy.
In another week they would be able to close the trap in the
rear of "the main body" of the French army. Von Moltke's
order of the day of September 2, 1914 was for his troops to
strike the knockout blow.

For three weeks the French public had learned next to
nothing of the front. At the start of August 1914 the
chatterboxes of the press, so convincing when it was a
matter of getting their readers to underwrite the Russian
loans, were bursting with wondrous details about the new
super weapon: a slice of French bread and butter that, like
a magnet, would draw the famished Huns to it as one man.The newspapers hushed up almost completely the disasters of
the Ardennes and of Charleroi. On August 28 they finally
revealed that the enemy's cavalry was at the Marne, then,
the next day, that the French capital itself was threatened,
and on that day Poincaré's government fled with its tail
between its legs.That news started the headlong flight of a half-million
Parisians, heading helter-skelter towards the south.Poincaré and his gang, absconding from the Elysée, took
refuge in Bordeaux and didn't show their faces in Paris
again until three months later, in November 1914, when the
big scare was over.

The commander-in-chief of the French armies, General Joffre,
was a man as calm as a locomotive sitting in a railroad
station.He was so dull of eye one never knew whether he was awake or
asleep. A massive man and a monument of serenity, he was a
big eater and slept a great deal. Some said he was "an
incompetent dullard." Whatever the case, he was unshakable,
"constant in his faults," and proceeded slowly. Charles de
Gaulle would write, "having badly engaged his sword, he knew
he couldn't lose his balance."One more week of retreat, and the German First, Second,
Third, Fourth, and Fifth Armies could easily join up behind
his troops in Champagne. His meals did not suffer because of
it, nor did his sleep; he was supremely calm, and without a
single unnecessary word set up his chessmen again each time
he was overwhelmed, putting his military pawns back in
place. He vowed resolve even while retreating.From Joffre's directive of September 1, 1914: "The flanking
movement carried out by the enemy on the left wing of the
Fifth Army, and not sufficiently arrested by the British
troops of the Sixth Army, makes it necessary for our entire
formation to wheel around its right side."After the thunderclap of the two great defeats of August 24
and 25, Joffre drew from the less threatened sectors those
elements which would permit reorganizing of the Fifth Army
to new strength. He entrusted the reorganization to General
Maunoury. His mission: stop the rout before Amiens by August
27. It was too late for that. The army was only able to
re-assemble well into the rear of the town.Militarily, Paris was almost defenseless at the end of
August 1914. The capital was only sketchily protected by
worthy territorials, who were more liberally endowed with
rheumatism than with military equipment. Its air defense was
limited to a total of nine planes, three of them Voisins,
and to two 75mm self-propelled howitzers.General Gallieni had been named commander of Paris by the
fleeing politicians. In poor health (he would die two years
later), he was a competent and clever officer, far superior
to the placid Joffre, whom he treated, moreover, with a
condescension that was rather irritating. But he was the man
whom France needed that week. To calm the Parisians who
hadn't fled, he had his brigade of grandpas march through
the city ten or a dozen times. From near Amiens he drew
seven regular divisions of the new army formed on August 27,
which were reinforced on September 1 by two divisions from
the Fourth Army Corps retreating from Sainte Menehould. In
the end, he had fifteen divisions.The Germans continued their dash to the southeast of Paris,
but now on their right flank fifteen French divisions under
a bold and dynamic commander were watching for the false
step that would enable an attack precisely where the enemy
were missing the 150,000 men suddenly sent to the Eastern
front.

Moltke's headquarters was far from the battle. That would
prove to be another big mistake on his part.Instead of installing himself at Laon or at Soisson, or at
least at Charleroi, from where he could follow the fighting
from fairly close at hand, in an era when communication was still slow and
unreliable, he set up his headquarters in Luxembourg, a few
miles from Germany.His armies advanced some three hundred kilometers with
impunity while he sat glued to his armchair in the old
feudal town nestled beneath a somber castle. His messengers
had to spend hours of travel on bad roads in cars that
endangered the driver if he exceeded sixty kilometers per
hour to reach the front.His remoteness from the action would be one of the major
causes of the defeat von Moltke was to suffer a week later
at the Marne, a river he would never see.Isolated, entirely dependent upon the belated reports of
messengers, von Moltke sent back orders that reached the
front line hours late, and dispatched delegations top-heavy
with second-rate staffers. The latter, mandated by von
Moltke to make immediate decisions in his name, had to be
obeyed by the army generals who, right there on the scene,
were better informed. They were thus not directly in
command, which meant that they were not in command at all.
Their commander was an aged Thor sitting on high in the
clouds of Luxembourg, and he would not descend from his
throne until he had been dismissed.Von Moltke wouldn't open his eyes to the danger until too
late. Joffre had assembled troops of the First Army before
Paris. Still retreating, in order to gain time, the French
generalissimo added reinforcements from his armies in
Lorraine, where the danger was less obvious.

Moltke would not be informed of the French reinforcement
from Lorraine until September 4, 1914. It would be September
5 before he, too, decided to bring up two army corps from
the Lorraine front to reinforce the German offensive, now at
the end of its momentum. These two army corps, like those
which were diverted to the Eastern front, would not serve
any purpose either, spending the decisive days traveling,
forty to a car, in cattle cars.Von Moltke got no clear idea of the maneuver the French were
preparing before Paris until a week later.Panicky Moltke finally discerned the threat: "It must be
assumed that the enemy is assembling heavy forces in the
region of Paris and bringing in new units in order to defend
the capital and to threaten the German right flank."The German right flank was von Kluck's army. Following
orders, he had advanced farther and farther to the south
beyond the Marne, well in advance of the thrust of von
Billow's Second Army.The objective was now almost within reach:"In conformity with the orders they had received on 4
September," writes the French historian Renouvin, "the German Fourth and
Fifth Armies were trying to open a road to the south in
order to join up with the armies of Lorraine that were
trying to force the passage of the Moselle and the Meurthe.
It was there the German command was seeking the decision."Von Kluck had deliberately shot ahead and was within an ace
of victory. Twenty-four years later Rommel would do the same
thing, but in each case the risk was great. Only one of von
Kluck's army corps, the Fourth Reserve Corps, on the Ourcq,
guarded his right flank which was threatened by Paris.Gallieni badgered Joffre. He pointed out the possibility of
striking a slashing blow right at von Kluck's rear. He could
count on his fifteen divisions, the British, and General
Lanrezac's Fifth Army, now commanded by the future marshal,
Franchet d'Esperey.The British had finally consented to back him up, without
enthusiasm to be sure, and after anguished debate: Marshal
French did not agree. He considered giving battle premature
and preferred to continue the retreat, falling back behind
the Marne; moreover, he was not ready to take part in a
battle where he would have to engage all his forces at one
time. Joffre, who wished to have done with it, decided to
throw his sword into the balance and went to see French.
With ill-concealed emotion he said:In the name of France, Marshal French, I ask you for your
total assistance. This time, the honor of England is at
stake." There was tension in the air. Joffre knew that
Murray, French's assistant, was opposed to the
counteroffensive. A heavy silence ensued. French replied
almost inaudibly: "I will do all I can. (Ferro, La Grande
Guerre, pp. 10f.)Joffre breathed a sigh of relief.

***

The French divisions assembled for the counterattack now
numbered twenty-eight. The Germans would be able to oppose
them with only fourteen divisions in the Paris area. From
one against one to two to one! An opportunity for a flanking
maneuver such as is rarely offered in warfare had arisen.After long reflection and hesitation, Joffre made his
decision on September 4. He was going to play his secret
card.The French generalissimo's order of the day:"It behooves us to take advantage of the risky situation of
the German First Army and concentrate the efforts of the
Allied armies on the extreme left flank against it."Gallieni proposed attacking Meaux. During the entire day of
September5, he pressed his luck north of the Marne grappling with the
flank-guard (the Fourth Reserve Corps) of von Kluck's army.
The next day, September 6, the offensive began. For three days it would be a fight
to the death.

France, indeed, was deciding whether she would live or die.Von Kluck defended himself with firmness and valor. But in
bringing his army corps to the north bank of the Marne, he
drifted away from von Bülow, his neighbor. Across a gap of
fifty kilometers they were linked only by a screen of
cavalry."The German generals," we read in Renouvin (La Crise
européenne, p. 249), "didn't overlook that danger, rather
counting on their offensive to protect them from it. By
means of a vigorous attack on both extremities of the combat
front they intended to seize victory before the breach was
wide open. Kluck brought all his effort to bear on his right
wing on the Ourcq plateaus, where he sought to outflank
Maunoury's army from the north. Bülow hurled his left wing
across the marshes of Saint-Gond against Foch's army. On the
morning of the 9th, those attacks, despite the stubborn
resistance of the French troops, still looked most
promising."The Germans, an ancient people of disciplined soldiers
admirably trained in defensive as well as offensive warfare,
returned blow for blow despite their numerical inferiority.
To relieve his right wing, von Moltke had sent the crown
prince into action with all his forces. The kaiser's son had
been on the point of capturing Verdun, which Joffre had
already authorized Sarrail to evacuate.To the north of the Marne, Bülow was grappling, still
victoriously, with Foch's attacks."The battle," Ferro relates (La Grande Guerre, p. 101)
"raged for several days, with the adversaries trying to
maneuver on the wings. Threatened on his left side, Bülow
had to call on the armies of the center: von Hausen drew
nearer to him and assisted him in closing the breach.
Farther off to the east, the French had gone on the
offensive as well, but it was the Germans in the last
analysis who led the operation."The withdrawal to the right bank of the Marne was
accomplished by von Kluck in perfect order:"That same day, Maunoury narrowly escaped being overwhelmed
by von Kluck, and Gallieni was forced to requisition the
Parisian taxis in order to send him reinforcements without
loss of time" (Ferro, ibid).That episode has become famous; it is the Epinal image of
Gallieni. Seeing that the offensive was in danger of taking
a bad turn, the quick- witted Gallieni rounded up every
ramshackle conveyance in Paris, loaded in all the soldiers
who were still left in the capital, and rushed them in the
direction of the enemy. It was the first motorized
expedition in history.

An unknown then entered on the scene. A mere lieutenant
colonel, a German named Hentsch, his own authority, in
comparison with that of the two army commanders, was
non-existent. But as von Moltke's personal emissary h commander-in-chief.e had been empowered to issue
orders in the field in the name of the Generals von Kluck and von Bülow, lacking direct
instructions from their chief, were trying to coordinate their operations. Von
Moltke should have been in a position to give the necessary
orders at once.Ex-Chancellor Prince von Bülow wrote:Moltke should have allowed the three armies of the right
wing to obtain their own information on the spot and thus
assure strategic unity. Instead of taking that course, at
the decisive moment, on 8 September, he sent a section
commander from his staff, Lieutenant Colonel Hentsch,
authorized him to make decisions, mentioned the possibility
of a retreat in the last verbal instructions he gave him,
and even added some indication of the direction of a
possible retreat. Of all the officers on his staff, Hentsch
was the most susceptible to doubts, and it was for precisely
that reason that he had the sympathy of his chief. Hentsch
held the fate of the battle in his hands - and the fate of
campaign, army, and country as well; and when he received an
unfavorable impression of the situation in the headquarters
of the Second Army, he recommended to Field Marshal General
von Bülow, the commander of that army, that he retreat
towards the northeast. Immediately afterwards he proceeded
to General von Kluck, the commander of the First Army, and
similarly urged him to pull back. (Memoirs, pp. 171f.)At that crucial moment, a mere lieutenant colonel who had
just stepped from his liaison car was making the strategic
and tactical decisions of the battle.Ferro (La Grande Guerre, p. 102) stated: "Lieutenant Colonel
Hentsch, given complete authority by Moltke back at general
headquarters in Luxembourg ordered von Kluck and von Bülow
to carry out a general withdrawal."Renouvin, the French historian, after interviewing various
German historians after the war, reported their conclusions:The German armies were on the point of victory. Even on the
right wing they were very close to success. Kluck on the
Ourcq and Bülow on the Saint- Gond marsh were in a position
to smash the enemy and should have been given a few more
hours: that would have been enough to change the outcome.
The man responsible for the defeat was Lieutenant Colonel
Hentsch, Moltke's deputy to the army commanders. He lacked
the necessary firmness of character. When one last effort
was all that was needed for victory he thought the troops
beaten.

As with all victories and all defeats, discussion could go
on forever.Excuses of misfortune change nothing. "Misfortune," said
Napoleon, "is the excuse of incompetents and blunderers."
The French attack at the Marne was courageously conceived at
a time when the situation was nearly desperate. Joffre, indifferent to adversity, and with
remarkable imperturbability, issued his orders with
sang-froid. Maunoury, during those days, lit up the battle
of the Marne with his brilliance. Wars abound in the
unforeseeable, but the excellence of the French command was
a reality.The victory did not bring total salvation; the proof is that
the war quickly bogged down on the Western Front for four
years. The battle of the Marne saved France from a
catastrophe which would probably have destroyed the military
strength of the country for a long time to come. But France
was spent and at the limit of her resources. It would take
her four years to recover.The chief contribution to the salvation of France had been
the pitiful leadership of von Moltke, the German
commander-in-chief. He never went near the field of battle;
his information was always late, as were his decisions,
which were nearly always based on indirect information. So
delicate were von Moltke's nerves that he was given to
crying at moments when it was imperative he have nerves of
steel.Prince von Wendel visited Moltke's general headquarters in
Luxembourg during those crucial days."When I was presented," the visitor recounted, "I was
appalled at the appearance of the chief of the general
staff, slumped down at his desk with his head in his hands.
When Moltke raised his eyes, he showed me a pallid face wet
with tears.""I am too heavyhearted," von Moltke confessed. William II,
who was ignorant of military realities and who never
exercised his power as commander-in-chief of the army from
1914 to 1918, had made a poor choice in the commander of his
troops. At the end of a month and a half he would find it
necessary to replace Moltke."He succumbed under the weight of his responsibilities,"
Prince von Bülow would later say. "At the crucial moment,
the reins slipped from his weak hands. The staff and junior
officers prevailed. The high command failed in its task."Bülow recalled an aphorism from the past: "More than two
thousand years ago a Greek philosopher taught that an army
of deer commanded by a lion was superior to an army of lions
commanded by a deer."In August and September of 1914 Moltke had an army of lions
at his disposal. Marshal Foch would say of it that "it was
the best army the world had ever seen." But the commander of
the lions had acted like a deer. Instead of keeping a stout
heart, he had defeated himself.Could he have acted otherwise? The answer is yes. For a
moment, he even thought of doing so. Then, weak-willed, he
gave up, and on September 10, 1914 he ordered a general
withdrawal. It was an unnecessary move, for the Allies had
discontinued their offensive."The French and the English," stated Prince von Bülow, "felt
so little like victors that they did not harass the Germans
as they retreated."

The French, like the Germans, were on their last legs. From
the Meuse to the Marne they had left hundreds of thousands
of men lying dead and wounded. Both armies were at the end
of their strength. The French artillery had, in just a few
weeks, expended half of its ammunition reserves. Ammunition
was stingily supplied: not even five million shells on the
first day of hostilities, although French guns would fire
three hundred million in the next four years. Machine guns,
the only effective weapon for fighting at close quarters in
a war in which from the first day millions of men faced each
other, were almost nonexistent.The French air force consisted of 160 planes. The pilots
were still armed only with rifles-and almost never hit
anything. Tanks had not yet been developed.

The only true weapon during those first five weeks of the
war of 1914 (August 4 to September 10) would be human flesh:
the French army, before the end of 1914, would see its
casualties rise to 900,000 (300,000 killed). They would
continue to grow. The final cost of the war to the countries
involved would be eight million dead and thirty-two million
wounded.Meanwhile, in mid-September 1914, the French army, after a
successful counteroffensive lasting a few days, found itself
winded and unable to exploit its brief advance. By September
17, 1914 it was over. The French pursuit had been halted at
the Aisne.General de Castelneau, mustachioed old gentleman of strong
Catholic faith who had been put in command of a new French
army, tried to take Amiens. His counterattack was brief: he
was thrown back at the Somme. General Maud'hui, who had
launched an attack with fresh forces between Bethune and
Arras, was no more fortunate, and was driven back to Albert.The Germans took only fifteen days to break up the French
counteroffensive.

Joffre tried once again to pull his forces together. The
British expeditionary corps, after sending off several
hundred thousand dead and wounded to the cemeteries and
hospitals, received reinforcements from Great Britain. The
Belgian army had evacuated Antwerp and could be used again.
Foch was ordered to join forces with both the British and
the Belgians to extend the offensive northward.He was an optimist. During the battle of the Marne he had
thought it won. "The war is practically over," he wrote at
the time to Clemenceau's brother.Since he was still convinced that he would be able in short
order to march into Berlin on horseback, he was entrusted with an operation
that might build on the victory of the Marne: encircling the
Germans with the left flank of the Allied front. The
objective was Ostend and the North Sea. With his left Foch
planned to skirt the German right.He had been given solid French divisions from various
sectors. In addition to the survivors from the Belgian army
and the British expeditionary corps, he had sailors from the
French navy at his disposal, to be used as infantry on this
occasion.The Germans, despite being compelled to give way somewhat by
Joffre, were not really beaten. They had given up a bit of
terrain north of the Meuse, but they still occupied the
richest and most strategic regions of France. The new
commander of the German army, General von Falkenhayn, had
been reinforced by 200,000 new soldiers, a great many of
them volunteers, the elite of the German university youth.The French and Germans alike would fight furiously for
several weeks. Result: a draw. Foch would not get to Ostend.
Falkenhayn would not get to Calais. The Belgians, outflanked
at the threshold of the North Sea, opened their floodgates,
inundating the field of battle. The battle veered off
towards Ypres. Falkenhayn sent his regiments, manned by
students burning with intense patriotic fervor to attack the
Flemish village of Langemarck. There they were massacred by
the thousands.The British commanders readied a second time to scurry off
towards their ports. The billowing sea tempted them, and
Foch was hard pressed to get them to stay on French soil.
Yet his famous hook hooked nothing. By mid- November 1914,
it was evident to the Allies as well as to the Germans that
they were both stalemated. Each failed in turn, reaping
nothing but tens of thousands of additional deaths.
Poincaré's victory parade of 1914 was at an end.On 29 November 1914, one of the most brilliant generals of
the French army, shocked to hear high-ranking French
officers at a meeting of the general staff at St. Pol
advocating renewed, murderous attacks by their exhausted
troops retorted furiously: "Attack! Attack! It's easy to
say, but it would be like knocking over a stone monument
with your bare hands."A British military critic commented, "Their attempts were no
more effective than a mouse nibbling at a strongbox. But the
teeth being used were the living strength of France."Poincaré's "divine moment" was about to turn into a
four-year long French martyrdom. Several million Germans and
Frenchmen, bloodied troglodytes of the twentieth century,
would thenceforce live buried in holes-haggard, helpless,
hunkered down under a rain of hundreds of millions of kilos
of death-dealing machine-gun bullets.

The Russian government, on the other side of Europe, did not
march triumphantly into Berlin by All Saints' Day of 1914.The victory of the little German army-the protective screen
of nine divisions-which triumphed over Sazonov at
Tannenberg, was completed during the same days as the battle
of the Marne by another Russian disaster suffered by General
Rennenkampf at the Masurian Lakes. The Russian losses were
twice those of their German assailants.Nevertheless, the Russian soldiers fulfilled the role
assigned to them by Poincaré of diverting part of the
Reich's troops toward the east, although they paid an
extremely high price for that support. Russian blood was
also costly to the Germans. Weakening their offensive in the
west had caused their drive against Paris to fail, and the
Germans lost their chance to destroy the French army.The Russian armies harvested nothing but disasters. They
offered a stiff opposition to the Austrians, beating them in
several important local battles, but gained no decisive
result. Russian forces were not able to penetrate to the
Hungarian plain, nor were they able to join up with the
Serbians, their steppingstone to the Balkans. That was the
essential thing for the Russians, the very purpose of their
Pan-Slav war. They had demonstrated that left on their own
they would probably never reach Belgrade, let alone
Constantinople.

***

The Russian armies had scarcely engaged in their first
battles before Slav imperialism would be revealed as an
enormous bluff.The giant had feet of clay. Russia's military command, and
her political administration as well, were dens of
insatiable grafters who had embezzled away a large portion
of the French credits obtained to reinforce Russian military
strength. Stocks of materiel supposed to have been supplied
by the billions of gold francs from Paris were non-existent
or comprised of defective goods. The commissions charged by
the French and the depredations of Russian embezzlers had
completely sabotaged quality.By the second month of the war, September 1914, many of the
Tsar's troops lacked rifles, and their artillery had run out
of ammunition. The following are samples of SOS messages
sent from the Russian front to the responsible officials of
St. Petersburg and of general headquarters:Telegram No. 4289, September 19, 1914: "Ministry of War.
Secret. Personnel: the field echelon on the road, 150 rounds
per gun. The regulating station echelon, none. Backup
supplies are exhausted. The general reserve depots are
empty."Message of September 20: "From the commander-in-chief to the
Minister of War. Cabinet. Secret. Staff, section one, No.
6284: if our expenditure of artillery ammunition continues
at the same rate, our total supply will be expended in six weeks. It is therefore necessary that the
government face the situation as it is: either the
manufacture of artillery ammunition must be considerably
increased, or we shall have no means of continuing the war
after the first of November."Telegram to the commander of the army, September 25, 1914,
No. 6999: "Secret. Personnel: Backup supplies at present
exhausted. If expenditure continues same rate, impossible to
continue war for lack of ammunition within fifteen days."It had been that way almost from the first contact with the
Germans. Marc Ferro (La Grande Guerre, p. 110) wrote: "As
early as the month of August, the Russian General
Rennenkampf made demands on his minister of war for 108,000
shrapnel shells, 17,000 high-exposive shells, and 56 million
cartridges; he was offered 9,000 shrapnel shells, 2,000
high- explosive shells, and 7 million cartridges."Stocks should have been at maximum before the Russians
marched. They had been increased only once after the war's
beginning. Even then, shipments were eight times less than
what was needed in cartridges and twelve times less in
shrapnel shells.An English officer attached to the Russian army could only
note: "The battles of the Third Army were nothing but
massacres, because the Russians attacked without artillery
support."

The little that the Russian troops had brought along was
shockingly defective. At Tannenberg, the Russian machine
guns almost all jammed at the end of a few hours. A third of
the cartridges failed to fire. Half the artillery shells did
not correspond in caliber to the artillery pieces.Renouvin, the French historian, wrote these startling lines:"In Russia, the crisis in materiel is alarming. The troops
lack rifles: the supplies laid in before the war have barely
sufficed to cover the losses of the first two or three
months ...The factories are not even manufacturing the guns
necessary to equip the reinforcements."It was the same with machine guns:"The infantry has never had the number of machine guns
provided for by regulations, and production is not
sufficient to cover losses."As for the artillery:"The replenishment of artillery ammunition shows a heavy
deficit: the army asks for a million and a half shells per
month; the industry is providing it with 360,000." (La Crise
européene, pp. 274f)"The Russian army," Renouvin concluded, "is worse off than
it has ever been..."Soon half the Russian infantrymen would be armed only with
clubs. General Denikin would write these haunting lines from
the front:

"Two regiments were almost completely destroyed by artillery
fire. When after a silence of three days our battery
received fifty shells, it was immediately made known by
telephone to all the regiments and all the companies, to the
joy and relief of the men."After listening to the complaints of Grand Duke Nicholas in
the latter's command car-the grand duke now pallid and
emaciated, his features drawn- Ambassador Paléologue, the
French firebrand of St. Petersburg, sent the following
dismaying note to his boss, Poincaré:"This evening I see the Russian army as a paralyzed giant,
still capable of striking formidable blows at adversaries
within reach, but powerless to pursue them."By then, half of the Russian army had already been put out
of action - more than two million casualties, 834,000 of
whom had been killed.Like the Russians the French government at the end of a
month was forced to beg for guns, cartridges, and cannon
from all over the world, from Portugal, from Spain, and even
from Japan.Telegram from the French ambassador at Tokyo, No. 36,
September 1, 1914: "Japan is willing to sell us 50,000
rifles and 20 million cartridges, whereas we most urgently
asked for 600,000 rifles."A personal confession by Poincaré:"By September 8 there were only 200 75mm guns in reserve.
Fifty batteries had been ordered from Creusot, but the firm
took four months to complete the first four." (Poincaré,
L'Invasion, p. 264)"Millerand hoped that we'd be able to buy the batteries in
Spain and in Portugal." (Poincaré, op. cit.)"The model 1886 rifle was being manufactured at the rate of
1,400 per day." Fourteen hundred rifles for an army of more
than two million men. And rifles, moreover, of a model
already more than a quarter of a century old.And this:What struck Joffre was the shortage of ammunition. Jean
Retinaud writes: "They went off to war with a supply of 1390
rounds per 75mm gun. The supplies have fallen to 695 rounds,
and only 10,000 rounds are being manufactured per day (for
more than 3,500 cannon). Joffre is so concerned about it at
this point that the only document he carries with him all
the time, the one thing he is never without, is a little
notebook in which the exact ammunition count is kept."
(Ferro, La Grande Guerre, p. 105)Ten thousand rounds for 3,500 cannon; that boded less than
three rounds per day per gun in the future, hardly enough to
bracket a target!Joffre went so far as to have the number of rounds fired by
the combat units reported to him daily. Here is his order:"Every evening, or every night before ten o'clock, each army
will informme by telegram of the number of rounds used during the day."Such was the abyss out of which he would have to climb, with
infinitedifficulty, while a million French soldiers fell. The
essential manufactures would only be achieved by recruiting hundreds of thousands
of coolie factory hands in Asia. Only then would it be
possible to rebuild a viable French war industry, sufficient
to assure the supply of ammunition to the front.

In truth, everyone had lost in 1914. No army had remotely
achieved its objective. The richest provinces of France,
representing 85 percent of her economic resources, were in
the hands of the Germans: 40 percent of her coal; 80 percent
of her coke; 90 percent of her iron ore; 70 percent of her
foundries; 80 percent of her steel; 80 percent of her
equipment.That despite the Marne, a transitory victory that succeeded
only in pushing the enemy back from one river to another.At the end of 1914 it was impossible to imagine when France
would recover its lost territory, let alone Alsace and
Lorraine. Rain and snow fell endlessly on two million
bronchitic soldiers buried, chilled to the marrow, in long,
muddy trenches.A hundred meters from the French, the barbed wire, machine
guns, and cannon of another two million soldiers, Prussians,
Württemburgers, Saxons, and Bavarians, barred all access to
the north and east. There was no hope of dislodging them
from their positions at the beginning of that unlucky
winter. Would they ever be driven out? No one ventured any
longer to predict. France's wonderful war had stink into a
morass of millions of bleaching bones.Britain's leaders had no more cause for rejoicing. A hundred
thousand Tommies had fallen. The rest were floundering in a
foreign land, chilled by the North Sea booming behind them,
demoralized by the shells falling on their flat helmets,
inverted soupbowls on which the shrapnel rang like sleigh
bells. Hindus came to the rescue of the British. And New
Zealanders. And Australians. All were bewildered at having
to fight and die for local quarrels they knew nothing about.
What could a Flemish village with a collapsed bell tower
mean to a citizen of Sydney? And whose interest was he
really defending in those putrid marshes? The war seemed
prehistoric and absurd to all of them. Marshal French was
right, they must have said to themselves, in wanting to lead
them out of this vile mud and regain the tranquility of
their native hearths in England or Scotland.The Russian leaders had foundered even more completely than
the British and the French. They had learned in that autumn
of 1914 that they could never win with only their own
forces, and that this war, which they had envisioned as the
annihilation of the Germans by the French, had turned into a
gigantic slaughter of their people. Now, they were running
short of everything: arms, materiel, men.Despite Austria-Hungary's weaknesses, Germany would pound
Russia harder every day with her enormous iron mace, as the
Teutonic Knights had done hundreds of years before. The
long-suffering Russian people would in the end escape from
the clutches of the rabble-rousing grand dukes. Imperial St.
Petersburg already knew it, sensed it, and even smelled the
catastrophe.For the Serbs, although they had been able to contain and
even repulse the Austrians in the beginning, the battles had
served no purpose. Germany was watching and could invade
Serbia at any time. Russia had come to a standstill in her
campaign to reach Serbian territory; she would never
succeed.For the Allies 1914 was marked by catastrophe.

On the German side it had been the same.The kaiser's victory in the west, almost achieved by the end
of August 1914, had sunk beneath the waters of the Marne. To
win the war with Russia, Germany needed to have finished the
war with France in no more than seven weeks. Germany had
defeated neither France nor Russia, and she found herself
irretrievably involved in wars on two fronts, which in 1914
had seemed impossible. She found herself in the middle of a
double conflict.In the west, German armies had occupied a considerable
territory in vain; the Germans were condemned to immobility,
exactly like the French, the British, and the Belgians
opposing her.In the east, Germany had warded off a savage invasion. The
Russians had only rudimentary weapons to fight with, and
sometimes none at all; but there were millions of them who
would march en masse to death. Vast reaches of space
stretched away towards the Urals and the Yenisei. To venture
there would be to drown, to be swallowed up, to be frozen.The Austrians, who might have been able, that August of
1914, to chastise the Serbians if they'd had only dealt with
them, had suffered one reverse after another, like a blind
man stumbling from one pothole to the next.All of them, absolutely all of them, had failed. The future
loomed before them like a great wall that could no longer be
broken through or scaled by any of them. The warring
governments would have to invent myths and pretexts, to
offer fabulous material advantages in order to lure millions
of other men to replace the fallen combatants and die like
them.How would they be able to convince some, cajole others? In
the name of what?

CHAPTER XX

Armed with Hatred

Instead of rifles, machine guns, and cannon, which in the
last analysis accomplished nothing, the leaders of the
Entente would resort to the weapon of the powerless: hatred.Hatred is the spice that makes a rotten or tasteless
political stew almost acceptable. The allied governments
would use it to season every bellicose appeal, every
chauvinistic tirade, and every line churned out by the
propagandists, so that every foot soldier mired in mud, or
foreign replacement they sought to draw into their hellish
cauldron, would firmly believe it was a matter of his own
honor and the dignity of mankind that Germany be crushed,
and that the sadistic Kaiser, that sawed-off dwarf grimacing
beneath his crested helmet, be boiled in oil.Before August 1914, the propaganda-peddlers had depicted the
German people as a tribe of cannibals. Even Maurras, the
most cultured French politician of his time, would be so
carried away as to denounce "the innate savagery of the
instincts of flesh and blood" of the Prussians, while
Bergson, the eminent philosopher, would discover "in the
brutality and cynicism of Germany, a regression to the
savage state."Clemenceau would write (Grandeur et misère d'une victoire,
p. 334), "I wish to believe that civilization will carry the
day against savagery, and that is sufficient for me to rule
out the German from a life of common dignity." He added:

The insufferable arrogance of the German aristocracy, the
servile genius of the intellectual and the scholar, the
crude vanity of the most well-adjusted industrial leader and
the exuberance of a violent popular literature conspire to
shatter all the barriers of individual as well as
international dignity.

William II, of whom the French military attaché in Berlin
had written, "1 am absolutely convinced that he is for
peace," in the writings of this same Clemenceau became "an
unnameable piece of imperial degradation"; and Germanic
civilization became "only a monstrous explosion."The following effusion is typical of the crude nonsense of
which the most celebrated French politician of the First
World War talked when he was describing the German people:

Every now and then I have entered the sacred cave of the
German religion, which, as we know, is the beer-garden. A
great nave of stolid humanity where may be heard swelling
amid the stale odors of beer and tobacco and the familiar
rumblings of a nationalism sustained by the bellowing of a
brass band and carrying to the highest pitch the supreme
German voice: "Germany over all!" Men, women, and children,
petrified before the divine will of an irrepressible power,
foreheads lined, eyes lost in a dream of the infinite,
mouths twisted by the intensity of desire - in great gulps
they all drink the celestial hope of unknown fulfillment.

That was the way a government leader in France represented
Germany in the twentieth century. Despite the fact that
"Germany over all," Deutschland über alles, in no way meant
a Germany over everything and everyone, but merely over the
numerous petty regionalisms that in the preceding century
were still often opposed to a unified German nation.. state.
Educated people knew that. For Clemenceau however, the most
important nation of Europe was just a conglomeration of
buffoons, gluttons, and drunkards capable only of the
"eternal violence of fundamentally savage tribes for
purposes of depredation by every means of barbarism."
(Clemenceau, p. 88)Once the war began, in August 1914, it was a matter of
fanning this bitter scorn to white heat, then transforming
it into irrepressible hatred. Colonel de Grandmaison even
exclaimed: "Let us go too far, and that will perhaps not be
enough."Apocalyptic pictures were painted of German heinousness so
that every soldier would be truly convinced that he was
fighting against the supreme horror, against "evil." The
campaign quickly spread abroad, in order to arouse the
terrified indignation of the whole world against the Reich
and, above all, to bring about the foreign military
enlistments that would end in glorious non-French deaths in
Champagne, in Flanders, and in Artois.The most fantastic of all the calumnies launched was the
story of the cut-off hands. Today no supporter of the Allies
of 1914-1918 would dare to drag out that moth-eaten canard,
so thoroughly has it been refuted. Yet that sinister tale
went around the world. According to the Allied
propagandists, in August of 1914 the Germans cut off the
hands of thousands of Belgian children. Descriptions of
these abominations found their way to the uttermost ends of
the earth and were a factor in the U.S. entry into the war
in 1917. In Italy, in 1915, the shops selling church
ornaments sold statuettes of a little Belgian girl with her
hands cut off, holding out her arms all bloody to Christ's
mother: "Holy Virgin, make them grow again!"Benito Mussolini himself told me one day how one of the most
important political figures on the side of the Allies, Emile
Vandervelde, had used that argument on him to convince him of the allies' righteousness
and Italy's duty to join the war. Here, word for word, is
what the Fascist leader told me years later, when he was at
the summit of his glory:One fine morning in the spring of 1915, Emile Vandervelde,
head of the Belgian socialist party and then president of
the Second International, came to see me. The Allies sent
him to me as they already had Marcel Cachin, the future head
of the French communists. Back then, we were party comrades.
I received him. He reeled off his arguments in favor of
Italy's participation in the war on the side of the Allies.It was then that he began to explain to me in great detail
the story of the children with their hands cut off by the
Germans. That made an impression on me, and he realized it.
"Mussolini," he said to me, taking me by the coat, "you're
an upright man. Do you really believe we can let such
frightful crimes go unpunished, and that you don't have an
obligation to join us to fight the country that commits such
atrocities?"He stopped, looked at me as though he had been crucified.I reflected an instant. "Yes, Vandervelde, what you tell me
is appalling. It is obvious that such monstrousness must be
suppressed. But tell me yourself, Vandervelde, have you
witnessed a single case of cut-off hands? Have you seen any?
Do you know any men of complete reliability who have seen
it?"Vandervelde drew himself up, quite taken aback. "Mussolini,
your question astonishes me. This affair is so obvious to me
that I've not given it a thought. No, I do not know of any
case personally, that's true. But there have been thousands
of them. You shall see, I'll bring you a complete file."Two months later Vandervelde turned up in Italy again.
Something appeared to be preying on his mind and he was
anxious to speak to me at once. "Mussolini, you remember our
conversation about the cut-off hands. I shouldn't like to be
dishonest, nor to have tried to mislead you. I promised you
I would, and I did make a search. Ah well, here it is. I
interrogated people everywhere, and I didn't find a single
case. Nowhere did anyone tell me where I could find someone
who knew of a case. I let myself be influenced. But I don't
want you to believe that I wished to influence you in turn.
That story, I am now convinced, is without foundation. I
owed you the truth. There it is."Vandervelde was propriety itself. Learning that he had been
deceived, he recanted. But he was one of the very few Allied
propagandists to do so throughout the First World War, or
afterwards. That gigantic slander in particular poisoned the
minds of millions of persons of good faith. Since the war,
Allied historians have had several decades to repeat
Vandervelde's investigation on a scientific basis. No one
has ever found a single child, Belgian or otherwise, who had
his hands cut off by the Germans.As if after the defeat of Germany in 1918, one mutilated
youngster wouldn't have been exhibited all over the world if
he could have been found! Nobody. Nothing. A complete lie.It is often said that where there's smoke, there's fire.
There had not been any fire, nor even any smoke. The slander
had been made up out of whole cloth, with supreme
propagandistic cunning to besmirch the opponent and make him hated.Since then, there have been many other examples of this sort
of base atrocity propaganda, but this remains a classic case
of a total, enormous lie spread throughout the entire world,
painting a people black for years afterward.

There was also the story of the candy. In 1914, if one was
to believe the Allied propaganda, the Germans had handed out
poisoned candy everywhere, as if they had been confectioners
rather than soldiers. In 1940 this anti-German myth would be
served up for a second time. In May of 1940, Le Figaro, the
most responsible newspaper in France, would even give the
exact dimensions of the poison candy (17 by 17 by 5
millimeters) on its front page. To be sure, none of this
famous candy ever put in an appearance either on Figaro's
table or anywhere else. It was a particularly idiotic tale.
It is hard to know how poison candy could have helped the
Germans in their offensive in 1940 or in 1941.Those sugary fabrications served up a thousand times in the
French and then in the world press, like the stories of the
cut-off hands, did more damage to the Germans than a million
shells. The great majority of people are naive and will
believe anything when it is printed in black and white. The
story will be repeated and repeated ad nauseam. It becomes a
mass hallucination. Almost inevitably the hearer is stirred
to a fever pitch and completely convinced.The propaganda of the Allies was awful in its cynicism, in
its unlimited exploitation of lies so flagrant they would
have been unbelievable in normal times. Decent men let
themselves be hoodwinked just like the rest. Misled totally
by such compelling falsehoods, millions of naive people
began to snarl in hatred.During my youth, I believed in those lies totally, just as I
believed the historical lie of the exclusive responsibility
of the Germans for the Great War. On the other hand, the
Pan-Slav provocateurs, and swindlers like Poincaré, were to
us heroes comparable to heroic and chivalrous knights. From
Paris and Brussels down to the tiniest hamlet of Belgium or
France, we were all overwhelmed by that mendacious
propaganda. It was so intensive that it was impossible not
to believe it. The Germans were monsters-that had become
dogma.

Yet those of us in the occupied areas, with front-row seats
so to speak, saw the Germans at close range. They were often
courteous and generally affectionate to the children. No
doubt they were thinking of their own children.

I remember especially Christmas, 1917. German officers had
requisitioned all the good rooms in the large house in which
I was born. We seven children had to move into the attic, up
under the roof.For us little Christians, Christmas meant the Nativity
scene, represented by a creche. Consequently we were
intrigued by the passage through the great family hall of a
fir tree, which an officer then set up in his room. He was a
plump little man, round as a barrel from my parents'
brewery. By peeking through the keyhole of the door to the
German's room, we saw the tree all ornamented with stars,
with colored lights, and with packages.On Christmas Eve the officer, for the first time in the six
months he'd been staying with us, gave a few little knocks
at the entrance to the living room. He addressed my mother
ceremoniously: "Madam, it is Christmas, and I have made up a
few little gifts for your children. Will you permit them to
come and take them off the tree?"My mother was very gentle. She spoke German, and was not
eager to offend the foreigner. Nevertheless we children,
bewildered, heard her say solemnly: "Monsieur, you well know
that our countries are enemies. Please understand that our
children can not possibly receive presents from an enemy."
The poor man made a polite little bow and withdrew. We, the
little ones, who had glimpsed the mirage through the
keyhole, were crushed. That's the way things were-one didn't
associate with the enemy even if, like my youngest sister,
Suzanne, you were only six years old!

***

The longer the war continued, the more we were all affected
by the world-wide wave of hatred. We believed any story
whatsoever. We were eager to believe.For some years those improbable calumnies left a mark on me,
even when I was studying at the university, when the most
elementary examination of history ought to have enlightened
me. The atrocity lies were poured into our skulls like
molten metal. Even long after the defeat of William II, a
large placard on the door of my parents' home continued to
proclaim: "Nothing from the Germans, nothing to the
Germans."For all that, 1 one day got an unexpected glimmer of the
genuineness of these sentiments. In 1919 my father ordered
some new tuns to replace the copper equipment of our
brewery, which had been turned into ammunition by the
Germans. Not manufactured by the Germans, naturally, those
monsters who cut off hands and poisoned candy, but from our
dear allies, the worthy British. On the day they arrived,
the entire local population accompanied the wagons
transporting the enormous vats, which were brilliantly
bedecked with ribbons. Curious, and struck with wonder at
their size, I examined them with pride, until I discovered
graven in the metal a large inscription which left me
flabbergasted: "Made in Germany." Less naive than ourselves, our valiant British allies had, for a
nice commission, fobbed off on us equipment manufactured by
those spurned and sickening Germans, whom we had thought
forever expelled from humankind.No doubt the British had never felt constrained to put much
credence in the severed hands of Belgian children and in the
murderous candy.

These bloody legends were augmented by many others of the
most varied kind. Another one which stirred the conscience
of the world was the affair of the Belgian snipers.There is certainly no question that the Germans went all out
in combat. That was the way wars were fought in those days,
the military manners of the age. If soldiers were fired on
by villagers, the village paid for it. Houses went up in
flames. The presumed civilian aggressors - violators of the
rules of land warfare of that era - were hunted down and
often killed. The British had been no less quick to act in
their campaigns in India, nor the Americans in their march
westward, nor the French of Napoleon during the campaign in
Spain, to judge by the atrocities immortalized by Goya. In
the course of their dash across Belgium in August 1914, the
Germans unquestionably killed a certain number of civilians
who were not necessarily innocent and not necessarily
guilty. The settling of accounts took place on the spot, in
the heat of the moment.The Germans explained that when they were ambushed by
civilians, they simply had to counter with severity. For me,
a youngster eight years old, one case was beyond dispute. In
my little town of Bouillon, a neighbor took up a perch,
armed with his rifle, atop a tall fir on the main road and
fired on the Germans when they came into view. Three days
later two other citizens of Bouillon fired on other enemy
soldiers. So there were instances of Belgian sniping, at
least those two. But to have spoken of it would have
constituted a kind of treason.In August 1914 it was necessary to assert that not a single
civilian had opened fire from ambush. The Belgian people had
not taken any part in the sniping, nor fired on a single
advancing German. Here, too, the contention took on the
aspect of dogma. The Legend of the Snipers: that was the
title of a hefty book sold throughout Belgium after the war.

This tale of the massacre of completely innocent civilians
thus became another international catch-phrase of Allied
propaganda.It took a very simple idea on the part of a German of rank
who had been exasperated by these accusations to set matters
straight. He was the Baron van der Lancken, a diplomat and
very well known in Parisian society before 1914. Before him, no one thought of consulting the essential
records, the files of the Germans who were wounded. In the
military hospitals every wounded man had a chart on which
the nature of his wounds was noted. Van der Lancken made an
exhaustive investigation of all the charts of the Germans
wounded in Belgium in August 1914. He discovered that
hundreds of the men had been wounded not by bullets or
shrapnel, but by shotgun pellets! Everything was now clear.
Those hundreds of Germans wounded by buckshot, as if they
had been wild game, couldn't have been shot by French or
Belgian or British soldiers; someone had to have fired at
them with guns intended for the Sunday hunt. Hence the
countermeasures, the ravaging of a few villages and towns
where civilians had rashly shot at the Germans in
contravention of international law.The Hague Convention was quite explicit: only soldiers who
were recognizable as such were allowed to bear arms.
Civilians were excluded from combat unless they wore a
uniform or at the very least some distinctive and very
obvious sign. Otherwise the use of a weapon was and is
grounds for execution.

There was in Belgium a secondary category of impromptu
combatants not authorized by the international conventions:
the civil guards.The latter formed a sort of town militia that was prohibited
from taking any part in the war. That express prohibition
was emphasized to them on August 4, 1914, the first day of
hostilities. Some of them did not comply and, armed with
their old service rifles, here and there fired on the
invaders, provoking bloody reprisals.The newspaper of these local guards moreover had a
provocative name: Le Franc-Tireur (The Sniper). But a sniper
automatically places himself outside international law if he
is not normally a member of the military units provided for
by law in the event of war.It would be the same in 1940-1945, when Germans were many a
time killed in Belgium, in Holland, and in France by members
of the "resistance"-men disguised as civilians,
indistinguishable from the general population, who
disappeared once they had struck. Such attacks were outside
international law. When irresponsible men commit them, such
illegal acts are sometimes dearly paid for, often by
hostages in lieu of the attackers, who have disappeared. The
primary culprit is the non-soldier who fires, wounds, or
kills, not the soldier who takes justified reprisals. Such
was the general case with regard to the civilians killed in
Belgium in 1914.

Every conceivable story was used to build up hatred during
the course of the First World War. The Germans had been so
barbarous, if you can imagine it, that they had everywhere
deliberately cut down the apple trees of France.An accusation ridiculous on the face of it, but for a few
less trees in the orchards of France or a few apples missing
from the fruitseller's window, a hysterical campaign would
be unleashed with repercussions clear to the coral reefs of
Australia and the glaciers of Greenland.What interest could the Germans possibly have in depriving
the French of a few apple tarts? If it had been a question
of corn or cattle, well and good; the Allies had no
compunctions after the armistice of 1918 about
requisitioning foodstuffs, including herds of cattle, in a
starving Germany against which they had long maintained the
cruelest of blockades. But apples?The stories of devastated orchards made no sense. The
Germans, to be sure, now and then cut down trees that
interfered with their artillery fire. All the armies of the
world would do the same thing. In January 1983, in Lebanon,
months after the cessation of hostilities, the Israelis were
still cutting down groves of poplars that form a screen
south of Beirut, limiting the field of vision at the
approaches to the airport. In no way did the Germans commit
graver crimes in chopping down a few fruit trees that were
in the way. No matter. The few apples the French didn't get
to bite into would be one more weapon in the arsenal of
Allied propaganda. Not since Adam and Eve has a story about
apples created such a hullabaloo.

***

That is not to say there were no Germans here and there
capable of violence. There are savages in all countries;
humanity is not a host of angels. The French, the Belgians,
the British, the Americans, too, had their sadists who
committed war crimes as often, and sometimes more, than the
defeated Germans. The only difference is that the victors
came out of the affair with glory, and instead of being
condemned to death, reaped decorations, promotions, and
liberal pensions.Three quarters of a century after the First World War, the
accusations of cut-off hands, of civilians killed, of apple
trees destroyed, which created such a stir at the time,
appear almost insignificant today. What do they amount to
alongside, not the legends, but the facts that the world has
known since then? Facts such as the frightful terrorist
bombings of Hamburg and Dresden and so many other German
cities during the Second World War, bombings in which
hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians were
carbonized. Or such as the atom bombings of the civilian
population of a Japan that asked only to surrender.Each time the goal has been to create hate and counterhate,
an overriding objective in 1914 especially. In the month of August the war
had ground to a halt, and it was necessary to keep the weary
or disheartened people in a state of frenzied excitement.
Hatred, the number one weapon, fired man's mind. What did it
matter if there wasn't a word of truth to the horrifying
stories? The propaganda rendered the Germans hateful: that
was its only aim.The waves of that anti-German hatred still roll after three
quarters of a century. Not that men still talk of cut-off
hands; most people have never heard that tale. Young people
look at you in amazement and even suspicion if you tell them
about it. The stories of the snipers and the apple trees are
no longer remembered either.Some people occasionally remember that Belgium, so often
raped in the course of her history, was violated once again
on 1914 by the Germans in their mad dash towards Paris.The particular hatreds created then no longer have their old
vigor, but a dark and profound aversion to the Germans has
stolen into the minds of millions since those days. Without
genuine reason they hate the Germans. They recognize that
the Germans are first-rate as regards their factories and in
their business dealings; that they gave the civilized world
Goethe, Schiller, Darer, Kant, Nietzsche, and Wagner. But
for millions of non-Germans, the Germans are brutes,
capable of anything.That summary judgement, born of the invented horrors laid to
the Germans in 1914, has remained in the subconscious of the
public. Let the occasion arise again, and that mentality is
reborn at once, as we saw in 1940-1945. Anything at all will
be believed if it is charged to the Germans.Whether it's a question of gas chambers in which, to believe
the figures of the accusers, the victims would have to have
been crowded together thirty-two persons per square meter
twenty-four hours a day; or whether a description is being
given to you of the crematory furnaces which, if they had to
burn up all the bodies assigned to them by the Jewish
propaganda, would still be working at full capacity in the
year 2050, or even 2080.When it's a matter of denigrating Germans, nothing need be
verified. Any testimony whatsoever, whether from liar,
conman, swindler, or whether or wrested from an accused
person by torture, is swallowed with rapture. It has been
decided in advance that Germans can't ever have been
anything but dreadful cutthroats.Countless persons still unconsciously carry around the old
complexes born of the hocus-pocus of 1914, accepting
everything as true, however improbable, unreasonable, or
even grotesque, without weighing or studying a thing. "Those
German monsters!," they think. And the matter is settled.

***

The strangest thing is that this hatred of the Germans is unique.
Since 1789 French governments have far surpassed the Germans in horror.

Napoleon didn't send the inhabitants of occupied countries
to work camps but to the hecatombs of his subsequent
campaigns (196,000 soldiers were conscripted by force in
Belgium alone). In Spain the French armies committed
horrible atrocities. But no disparaging memory of the French
nation is cultivated.It is the same with the British establishment, who steeped
the whole world in blood in the course of subjugating its
colonies and even carried out the total annihilation of a
race in the mass murder of the Tasmanians.And the same is true of the American politicians, who took
half of Mexico at the point of a gun and enslaved millions
of blacks, and who exterminated hundreds of thousands of
Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki with frightful cruelty.
If Truman and his backers had accepted Japan's surrender
offer, instead of demanding "unconditional surrender," all
those lives would have been spared.When it is a question of non-Germans, such slaughters are
the misfortunes of war. As news items they are forgotten
after a few decades. But for the Germans, the ordeal of
their "war crimes," true or false, is never over. Germany's
sins, real or invented, are to be publicized until the end
of time.The persistance of this hatred illustrates the force, and
the frenzy, with which public opinion was poisoned by the
Allied governments between 1914 and 1918, in order to stir
up their people at home to fight and to recruit a maximum of
cannon fodder from abroad. And to the extent to which the
public was led astray in the Allied countries, the political
and moral foundations of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 were
inexorably established.By eliminating or inventing diplomatic documents
- the
tsarist bureaucracy destroyed or faked some eighty per cent
of its foreign policy documents from 1914 to 1917 - the
Allied leadership convinced the world that the horrible
Germans were solely and totally responsible for the war of
1914. On the day of reckoning, June 28, 1919 at Versailles,
the barbarous Germans would pay the price of their total
responsibility for the war. The Versailles Treaty of 1919,
in the same spirit as the war, would be the Treaty of
Vengeance against German crimes, for which no punishment
would be sufficiently severe.

***

But it would be a long and bloody road to Versailles. At
year's end in 1914, on the mud and snow-clogged European
fronts, millions of men worn out from suffering no longer
had even the strength to imagine how they could ever
extricate themselves from the mire in which the corpses of
their enemies and their companions rotted by the tens, the
hundreds of thousands.If the leaders of the slaughter intended to prolong the war
at all cost, it would be necessary to procure immense quantities of raw
materials, the stockpiling of which no one had given a
thought to before the hostilities, since the war would
certainly be of short duration.Above all it was imperative to obtain millions of new
soldiers, at little or no cost, no matter where or how, in
Europe or outside of Europe, without regard for men's
opinions, their freedoms, or their lives.From 1915 on, many peoples subjected to this slave trade
would be sold at auction. Twenty-seven countries would be
dragged into that insanity, to be sure in the name of Right.
In the name of Right, 32 million men would be maimed; from
1915 to 1918, 8 million dead would lie scattered and mangled
in filthy mud all the way from the Yser to Mount Sinai.The quest for future cannon fodder began. First Turkey, then
Italy, would be dragged into the affair.

CHAPTER XXI

Debacle on the Dardanelles

The Russian Pan-Slavists, in greater distress than the
others, were the first ones to demand the intervention of
Italy.Despite the weakness of Austria-Hungary, the Russian army
had not been able to smash her. By 1915 only the creation of
a new front on the northern extremity of Italy could offer
the likelihood of providing the tsarist regime some relief.
If intervention by the Italians could be achieved, part of
the Austrian forces on the eastern front would have to be
transferred immediately to the new field of battle in the
Tyrol. That would mean hundreds of thousands fewer
combatants facing the Russians and Serbians. "Right" had
nothing to do with these plans.Italy was not threatened by anyone. On the contrary, the
later Italy entered the European conflict, the fewer deaths
the adventure would cost.But the Pan-Slavists could not wait, as is shown by the
astounding remarks that Grand Duke Nicholas had charged
Ambassador Paléologue with transmitting to Poincaré at the
end of 1914, after only a few months of war.The grand duke's warning was as sharp as a saber thrust:"I must speak to you of serious matters. 1 am not talking to
you now as Grand Duke Nicholas but as a Russian general. 1
am obligated to tell you that the immediate cooperation of
Italy and Romania is an imperative necessity."The former warmonger-in-chief of July 1914 had added:"I say again and I emphasize: of inestimable value."Yet the Russian government had nearly half a million more
soldiers at its disposal than the Austrians and Germans
combined. At one time the tsarist regime disposed of twice
as many. At the end of January 1915, she mustered 1,843,0(30
soldiers against 1,071,000 German and Austrian troops
Combined. But already Russia's leaders felt the ground
giving way. That the Austro-German pressure be reduced was
imperative.Otherwise, though hardly into the war, Russia stood to lose
it.

***

The situation of the western allies was scarcely less
perilous.Despite the costly victory of the battle of the Marne, which
had represented no more than the reconquest of a department, the
French high command had persisted in its wish to return to
the offensive in the dead of winter. On December 16, 1914 it
had tried to break the German front in Artois, and had been
unable to drive a wedge in anywhere.From December 20 to January 30, 1915, it attacked again,
this time in Champagne. A second defeat. The attack was
resumed from February 16 to March 16, 1915. A third defeat.
Miserable terrain, abominably wet. Impossible to make any
headway. The artillery was inaccurate: on several occasions
the French guns fired on the French infantry. No advance,
and a terrible massacre on the German barbed-wire
entanglements, which were uncrossable.Yet the lesson of this triple carnage would have no effect.
In May and in June of 1915 French, English, and even
Canadian troops would again be sent off to the slaughter.
The maximum ground gained would be a kilometer at one point,
four kilometers at another.In September 1915 the British and French would give that
back for the fifth time in less than ten months. Then the
command would double the stakes, mounting two offensives
simultaneously, in Artois and in Champagne.Joffre's order of the day: "Allow the enemy neither rest nor
respite until the achievement of victory."But as he confessed to the King of Belgium: "It may succeed
and it may not."It didn't. The British command counted on winning through a
surprise weapon: poison gas. But the winds were unfavorable,
and the gas rolled back upon their own troops. In Artois it
was impossible even to cross the first river, the Souche. In
Champagne the Germans cleverly slipped away, settling down
four kilometers to the rear in a second line of positions.
The. French would bang their heads against a stone wall
there for eleven days. Finally they would have to end their
useless attacks and dig in once again."At whatever cost," Joffre had said.They were learning the cost: 400,000 dead or taken prisoner
and a million wounded or evacuated due to illness. British
losses were of similar proportion. The front had become a
deathtrap. A different tack was needed, some pretext or
other to bring about additional fronts on which new, foreign
armies would bear the brunt instead of the French and
British armies. The Tommies and poilus had been bled white
five times in succession in a matter of months and were at a
point of an exhaustion which could prove fatal.

***

The Russian and Anglo-French political interests thus
coincided. The winning over of Italy was of great
importance. An Italian front would provide a safety valve, and Italy represented a source of
several million new soldiers, a magnet that would draw enemy
forces to the Tyrol and to the Adriatic.Italy's support was all the more indispensable because
Germany herself had been reinforced by Turkey. Turkey, as a matter of fact,
had entered the war against the tsarist expansionists on
October 29, 1914.Just before Britain's declaration of war on August 4, 1914,
Germany had been able to slip her two splendid cruisers, the
Göben and the Breslau, through the Straits and past
Constantinople as nimble and quick as two flying fish. A few
days earlier they had still been in the middle of the
Mediterranean. In the course of a sensational odyssey, they
had been able to elude the Allied ships pursuing them,
making sport of them thanks to their speed. Since then thay
had bottled up the Russian fleet, preventing the Russians from exporting wheat and receiving war materiel.On August 29, 1914 they had boldly bombarded Sevastopol,
Odessa, and Novorossiysk.One important advantage for Germany: with Turkey in the war, considerable Russian forces would be drawn to the Caucasus
and held there. Another outstanding consideration: Turkey
was Muslim, the sultan the spiritual leader of Islam. Turkey
might thus stir up all the Islamic countries then under
British control and foment rebellion in them. At that time
Turkey extended almost to the Suez Canal: her armies would
perhaps even be able to reach it and cut that vital artery
of the British Empire.

***

The Allies, conscious of the danger, had tried everything
since the beginning of August 1914 to counteract German
offers. The British and the French had gladly made the Turks
extraordinary concessions in Thrace and in the Aegean Sea in
order to win them over to their side, or at last to keep
them neutral. But the Russians had gone to war on August 1,
1914 precisely and primarily in order to win Constantinople.
Consequently, the Russian expansionists not only didn't
dread a war on the part of the Allies against the Turks -
they longed for it. Thus the Anglo-French-Turkish
negotiations ran completely counter to their own intentions.
Sazonov replied to the Anglo-French negotiators that in
allowing talks he desired only "to gain some time without
making any declarations which would bind us to anything."Britain, anxious to make an alliance with Turkey, had gone
so far as to offer to guarantee her the integrity of her
territory - hence of her capital, Constantinople, the
number-one objective of the Pan-Slavs. At the same time,
however, with a hypocrisy worthy of centuries of duplicity,
the British establishment had informed the Russians in great
secrecy that "the guarantee was valid only for the duration
of the war in progress," and that "Russia would always be able, after the conclusion of the
general peace, to resolve the question of the Straits to her
own satisfaction" (Renouvin, La Crise européenne, p. 263)The Russians, knowing the British and sensing the trap,
demanded a written pledge of unlimited duration, which put
an end to these duplicitous negotiations. The parleying had
lasted no longer then it would have taken an ox to cross the
Bosphorus. It hadn't been viable; the Anglo-French aims and
the Russian aims were completely antithetical. When it had
come to the bidding, Germany had won.The Pan-Slavists, their pretensions unscathed and the game
of the perfidious British establishment countered, were no
better off: for they were now faced with another front right
in the middle of the Caucasus. This made it all the more
imperative for them to mitigate the new danger by creating
another Allied front in Italy or Romania.

***

In autumn, 1914 the Japanese were able to provide the Allies
with a measure of compensation for their misadventures with
the Turks; on August 23, 1914, the Japanese, on the other
side of the globe, entered the war against Germany. The
internal quarrels of the Europeans were no more to Japan
than a news story from a faraway land. The only importance
of the war in their eyes was the opportunity it afforded
them of seizing Germany's indefensible territories in the
middle of the Pacific, and in the Far East, in particular
the outstanding naval base of Kiaochow in the Shantung
province of China. The Germans, their hands full in Europe,
were at a loss to defend Far Eastern possessions ten
thousand kilometers from Berlin while their lives were at
stake at Chateau-Thierry on the Marne at the end of August
1914. On November 7, 1914, the handful of Germans defending
Shantung was obliged to capitulate. At the same time Japan
seized the port of Tsingtao.The Allies, especially the French, naively imagined that the
Japanese, their pockets thus effortlessly filled, would
immediately come running to the West as intrepid "knights on
the side of Right." Unbelievably ingenuous, the French and
British leaders asked the Japanese to form an expeditionary
corps of three or four army corps for that purpose. That
would have brought hundreds of thousands of Japanese
soldiers to the European fronts. "We must not overlook any
means," French Minister Delcassé declared.In fact, the Japanese would not be seen in Paris until forty
years later, after two world wars. Their weapons would then
be autos, cameras, and video cassettes.A note from the Japanese government politely informed the
Allies that apart from one or another symbolic mission, its
troops were assigned to their home territory and did not intend to take part in
foreign conflicts of whose causes they knew nothing.The French politicians simply couldn't understand. The
Japanese prime minister had to explain it to them a second
time: "What is the need of sending Japanese troops to Europe
if we have no direct interest there?"

***

It was Churchill, imaginative to the point of extravagance,
who furnished the first new field of battle. He had already
dreamt of a landing in Schleswig, then in the Adriatic near
Pola. Now he fixed his gaze upon Europe's other extremity,
the Dardanelles. It was a way of chastising the Turks for
not responding to British promises and for having preferred
those blockheaded Germans. The Germans had been on the best
of terms with the Sublime Porte for some years. In Anatolia,
before the war, they were constructing a railway line
intended to link Germany and Baghdad. Thanks to the new
railroad, Turkey was opening up her territory to European
trade.In exchange, German industrialists had obtained mining and
oil concessions on both sides of this Asian railway line.
There remained only nine hundred kilometers of rail to throw
across the desert, and Berlin would have a balcony on the
Persian Gulf. For the British bankers of the City the
intrusion of the Germans into the Near East was poaching.
The Gulf belonged to them. Hurling a British army at the
Turks would drive off competitors, and assure their monopoly
on petroleum, which in 1914 was as British as whiskey was
Scotch. Finally, forcing passage of the Straits would enable
them to join up with the Russians."It is hard to imagine an operation offering more hope,"
Balfour prophesied.Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, was so sure of
entering Constantinople, like the Ottomans in 1453, that he
proposed naming his expeditionary force the "Constantinople
Expeditionary Force."On January 28, 1915, the British government ratified his
plan. There was grumbling in the ranks however. Lord Fisher,
his assistant, was convinced that without the complete
support of the Greeks - who were clinging to their
neutrality - the operation would be a monumental failure.
But to rope the Greeks into the campaign meant bringing them
to Constantinople, which they were as anxious to conquer as
were the Russian Pan Slavists. That ran the risk of seeing
an "archon" (as in the time of the Byzantine empire) set
himself up there instead of the tsar. George V had promised
the city to his St. Petersburg cousin, who was absolutely
determined to be another Basiliscus. So it would be
necessary to dispense with the Greeks temporarily.There was another complication. The Allied generals, whose
forces had taken a terrible beating on the French front,
refused to furnish any contingents. Churchill, who would have ousted the Eternal
Father from his celestial throne if he had found him at all
hesitant, wasn't disconcerted in the slightest by something
so minor. He wouldn't even consult with Joffre, nor with the
French, whom he knew to be hostile to his plan. He decided
that he would open up the Sea of Marmora with his fleet
alone.The Turkish forts at the neck of the Straits? The artillery
of Churchill's fifteen cruisers and battleships would blow
them to bits. The channel? His dredgers would clean it out
like a swimming pool.

The French fleet would take part, too, in this great
nautical junket. Only the Russians, smelling Greeks
everywhere, and at bottom distrustful of this British plan,
refused to participate. Yet, the prize having been promised
to them, they more than anyone else should have been
interested in the project's success.Churchill was so enthusiastic that Lord Kitchener, though
not convinced, finally agreed like everyone else, but with
an odd reservation: "One of the merits of the plan is that
if it doesn't meet expectations, it will be possible to
break off the attack."Churchill, a cigar in his fist like the lance of Patroclus,
sounded the call to action on March 18, 1915. Under the
command of Admiral Carden, the magnificent British fleet,
augmented by French ships, fell into line at the entrance to
the Straits. The Turkish batteries, camouflaged on the
nearest hills, were soon silenced. The Turks' German
advisers had planned the defense very well, however. The
shores were sown with traps and the water with mines. The
big Allied warships hit them one after the other, and each
one sent a thousand or two thousand sailors to the bottom.
Breaking through was impossible. It was a Trafalgar in
reverse. The bombardment continued for five days. A number
of Turkish batteries were destroyed, but since no landing
forces accompanied the expedition, it was without success.The German and Turkish losses were insignificant, 200 men in
all, while strewn in every direction were the bodies of
thousands of Allied sailors, floating like buoys in the
shining seas.Without landing troops, it was useless to try again to pass
through the channel. Each attempt meant sending cruisers and
destroyers to the bottom, their admirable crews standing at
attention at the moment of their death. Churchill had showed
himself nothing but a braggart, and a gravedigger of English
and Scottish sailors. It was necessary to withdraw, albeit
painfully and with difficulty. A third of the expedition's
men and some of his Majesty's finest warships lay strewn
about the bottom of the Dardanelles forever.

This disaster inflicted on her fleet by a few Germans and
Turks was intolerable to the pride of Britannia, ruler of
the waves. It had to be answered. What had been lacking was
support from ground forces. Therefore, despite all
Churchill's promises that the fleet alone could clear the
sea, an expeditionary corps was mounted, with the task of
pinning down the Turks along the Hellespont.As always with Churchill, it was begun in an improvised
fashion. There had been no careful preparation by the
combined staffs. Thirty thousand men were to be landed in
confusion; and it was they who would be pinned down, not the
Turks, whom the German tacticians maneuvered in masterly
fashion. The luckless French and English soldiers on the
beaches died of thirst, shot, shell, and then typhus. They
had to be reinforced: five new divisions were landed on the
scorching sands at the foot of the enemy fortifications,
where they in turn were cut to pieces by high-angle fire. In
London, generals and admirals hurled abuse at each other. A
cabinet crisis ensued. The Allied soldiers on the Straits
were at death's door, and again new divisions were sent in
piecemeal. Thousands of Australians were thrown into the
breach.Like the French in the Belgian Ardennes in August 1914, the
Allies did not even have good maps of the region. There were
no hospital ships, even though a whole army lay dying under
the torrid sun without food or supplies. Troops were landed
and landed again, only to be decimated each time. Nearly
half a million men would follow one another to that hellish
shore: 145,000 would be killed or wounded there.The survivors, heartsick to the point of nausea, could be
thrown back into the sea by the Germans and Turks at any
time.It was even decided in London to divert and recall the
relief convoys, including the clothing sent to withstand the
winter. Three weeks later the cold and snow swept down on
the unfortunates: two hundred died of the cold; five
thousand had their feet frozen. It was one of the great
tragedies of the war. After the Somme, Artois, and
Champagne, in 1915 yet another dreadful disaster for the
Allies.Churchill extricated himself by having himself sent on a
staff mission to France, where he was tolerated for only six
months.As for the expeditionary force, it was impossible to bring
back from the Dardanelles the defeated troops, who, ravaged
by typhus, were skeletal. One had to save face. Salvation
was Salonika, a large Greek port, hence neutral. Allegedly
the British had entered the war on August 4, 1914 because of
the violation of Belgian neutrality. Greece was as neutral
in 1915 as Belgium had been the previous year. She was
nonetheless to be violated in her turn. Such was the "War of
Right."In August, 1915, despite the protest of the king of Greece,
Constantine I, the Allies landed with their rifles, their
cannon, and their dying on the "neutral" docks of Salonika.

CHAPTER XXII

Italy Joins the Fray

Even before Salonika, grimacing War had dragged Italy into
its dance of death. Did the Italian people want it? The
historical evidence available today enables one to answer
with a flat no.Even Mussolini, who was the Allies' outstanding supporter in
Italy in 1915, had taken a stand against any participation
in the conflict at its outset. "Down with war! The time has
come for the Italian proletariat to keep faith with the old
watchword: not a man, not a cent." The extremist of 1914
would a little later become one of the most severely wounded
soldiers of the Italian campaign, hit by dozens of shrapnel
fragments.With the formation of the Triple Alliance
(Germany-Austria-Turkey), it had been thought that Italy
would be persuaded to enter the war on the side of the
Alliance, to whom she was bound by treaty. But in 1914, as
again in 1939, Italy, the land of Macchiavelli - i.e.,
sensibly perspicacious - cared little for pretty sentiments,
which often camouflaged cold calculation, and didn't pretend
to be overly troubled by problems of conscience.What problems? The others had hardly been troubled by them
in 1914. Wasn't it strictly its own self-interest that had
prompted the Russian government to convert the Balkans into
a shield? Was it not strictly in their own interest that the
French politicians had made such use of the Russian
cannon-fodder to regain Alsace-Lorraine? Was the British
establishment not motivated by interest when it used the
pretext of the violation of Belgium in order to trip up a
dangerous naval and business rival? "Right" is rouge that is
put on for effect. Why should not self-interest, the law of
nations, have been the barometer of the Italians as well?In international parleys Italian politicians have no equals
for maneuvering, protesting loudly, becoming indignant,
throwing their arms in the air, and all but crying, as if
the other negotiators were strangling them and murdering
them. Comedy or tragedy, they play both roles to the hilt.

When the Italian government declared its neutrality on
August 3, 1914, it was motivated by just one idea: to cash in on that
neutrality. Not to let anyone play on its sympathies, but to
see which side would offer the most. Salandra, president of
the Italian council, didn't mince words. He automatically
put aside "every preoccupation, every preconceived notion
that was not exclusively inspired by the exclusive and
unlimited devotion to the fatherland, by the sacred interest
of Italy" (October 16, 1914).But at the end of the autumn of 1914, what was the
"egoistically sacred" and "exclusive" interest of that
delightful country? To achieve its interest, was it
absolutely necessary to take up arms in favor of one of the
sides?"I believe," sagely declared Giolitti, former president and
a liberal in temperament, "that under the present conditions
in Europe, we might obtain something appreciable without
war."That "something appreciable" was the Italian Trentino. The
sons of Romulus and Remus had the teeth of a she-wolf, like
their patroness of twenty-five hundred years before. Many
remembered ancient Rome, mistress of the world. Some of
them, like Gabriele d'Annunzio, dreamed theatrically of a
grandiose immolation of the Italians: "They will have to
suffer resplendent blood letting, to soothe a radiant
grief!"The Italian Trentino was a reasonable demand. For people of
the same race and blood to be reunited was just as sound.Overdoing it and swallowing up foreign peoples against their
will, on the other hand, was in keeping neither with the
"Right" so highly praised, nor perhaps even with wisdom.
Many are the nations in history that have suffered from an
indigestion of alien peoples.What would be Italy's choice?

And what was Vienna going to offer? At the outset, the
Austrian government had dragged its feet. Then Franz Josef
warmed up to the idea of turning over the foothills of the
Southern Tyrol to Italy. Austria was even disposed to let
her port of Trieste be turned into an independent state. As
for Albania and the Turkish islands of the Dodecanese,
Austria would give the Italians carte blanche.Without firing a single shot, Italy was thus able to make
not merely appreciable but considerable gains. To obtain the
Austrians' cooperation, Wilhelm II, who had no wish to see
another enemy fall upon him, brought great pressure to bear
on Vienna. He sent his former chancellor, Prince von Bülow,
as a special plenipotentiary to Rome. Von Bülow was an
Italophile and an Austrophobe, and the intimate friend, as
was his wife, of the Italian Queen Mother. Until the last
week of his stay, that is to say until May 21, 1915, he
tactfully endeavored to keep Italy at peace, while striving
to satisfy her territorial demands. On May 9, 1915, Prince
von Bülow, accompanied by the ambassador of Austria-Hungary
himself, confidentially presented the Italian government
with the following note:"Austria-Hungary is prepared to cede that part of the Tyrol
inhabited by Italians, Gradisca, and the west bank of the
Isonzo insofar as it is Italian; Trieste is to become a free
city within the Austro-Hungarian empire, with an Italian
university and town council. Austria recognizes Italian
sovereignty over Valona and states that she has no political
interest in Albania.""Fatte presto [hurry it up]," King Victor Emmanuel told von
Bülow on several occasions when this very important offer
was finally delivered to him. But without its being known in
the embassies, the irretrievable had already taken place.
Two weeks earlier, on April 24, 1915, Italy had come to a
secret understanding with the Allies in London.Victor Emmanuel had kept up appearances. When von Bülow had
come to deliver to him personally a letter from William II
ardently imploring him to remain faithful to their
friendship and their treaty, the king of Italy had spoken of
his duties vis-à-vis public opinion, the majority of the
country, and the parliament.In fact, no party in Rome had a majority in the spring of
1915. Only the common people, heavily subjected to Allied
propaganda, had made clear their feelings. The Italian
minister of the interior himself had clearly recognized it:
"If there were a plebiscite, the majority would vote against
war."Giolitti, who was also against the war, had received the
support of a large majority of the deputies: 320 out of 508.
In a gesture absolutely unprecedented in a parliamentary
government, those 320 deputies had come one by one to
deliver their calling cards to the personal residence of the
head of the neutralist party, in order to signify their
refusal to side with the Allies. Salandra, the prime
minister, felt himself so repudiated that he resigned. The
labor unions, for their part, were massively opposed to
entering the war. As for the people themselves, in reality
they could hardly manifest their will democratically,
because in 1915, seventy-eight per cent of the Italians
still did not have the right to vote. At that time, an
Italian had to possess a school diploma in order to vote.
Thus less than a fourth of the citizens were voters.

How, then, was Italy's entry into the war brought about?
With the help of street riots carried to the point of direct
violence, fomented by bands of guerrifondigi [warmongers]
who, by a wholesale breaking of windows, had forced their
way into the Italian parliament to cries of "Viva la
guerra!"Allied funds, principally French, had been distributed in
Rome with extreme generosity. The newspapers, showered with
subsidies even more openly than the warmongering French
press of 1914, had whipped up public feelings. Mussolini had founded a newspaper that was
destined to become famous: II Popolo d'Italia. The future
fascist leader had made it an inflammatory sheet, exciting
both a fury for war among his socialist readers and
patriotism among the irredentists who dreamed of replanting
the old fasces on a maximum of the lands of the old Roman
empire. D'Annunzio, with a bald skull atop an overexcited
brain, and his lyre in hand, provided the epic tone.This warmongering movement also enjoyed the extremely active
support of Freemasonry. All these interventionists combined
constituted no more than a minority, but they raised a din
like the geese of the Roman capitol of old. No one else
could be heard. They took to the streets, screamed, created
havoc. Victor Emmanuel, frightened by the broken windowpanes
of the parliament building, refused Salandra's resignation.

***

Salandra played only a modest role in this whole affair. He
was a mediocre politician without any real power. The real
wirepuller was a very bizarre Italian named Sonnino: a Jew
born in Lebanon of a Jewish father and a Welsh mother.
Another strange characteristic: his mother had made a
Protestant of him, quite surprising in a country where
almost everyone was a Catholic. Jew, Levantine, Protestant,
half-Welsh, Sonnino would be the standard-bearer of
internationalist Italy.The Austrian offer, however, offered the Italians
considerable territorial advantages on a golden platter, and
without a single one of their soldiers having to suffer a
scratch. It was presented rather reluctantly, moreover, by
the Austrians, who complained, not without reason, at the
blackmail, but who, at the imperative urging of William II,
had to resign themselves to yielding.Giolitti had asked "parecchio" (plenty). In the end, Italy
was going to come away with all of the South Tyrol and an
autonomous Trieste, as well as recognition of her freedom of
action in Albania and the Dodecanese, without giving up a
single lira or shedding a drop of blood."Italy is following a policy of blackmail against us that
has no parallel in history," Bethmann-Hollweg moaned, all
the while he was giving in to it.But they were at an auction sale. Sonnino would sell Italy
to the highest bidder. The Italian people, inflamed by the
Allied propaganda, gave no thought to the possible cost of
this foreign largesse. For the Allies were offering
everything: the Italian Trentino most certainly, but the
German Trentino as well, which would mean that hundreds of
thousands of non- Italians would be absorbed by a foreign
land without their consent. That, of course, was strictly
contrary to the principle of self-determination for which
the French and British politicians later claimed to be
fighting.

The people living along the shores of the Adriatic,
similarly offered to Italy by the Allies, were to suffer the
same violation of their "right." Who asked the opinion of
the inhabitants not only of Istria, but of Dalmatia? Of
Albania? Of the entire string of coastal islands? They
numbered in the millions, these largely Slavic and Albanian
peoples whom the Allies were ready, out of self-interest, to
turn into Italian citizens.It was for many of these South Slays that the assassins of
Sarajevo had unleashed the great European carnage on June
28, 1914. It was to assure a Slavic expansion as far as the
Dalmatian ports in question that Russia's Pan-Slavists had
begun the military phase of the war. Now these territories
were to be given to the Italians on the pretext that some
emperor or other had had his villa there two thousand years
ago, and that some thousands of Italian fishermen and
shopkeepers had gone ashore one day and taken residence
there. But why, in that case, not promise Lyon, the native
city of the Emperor Claudius, to Italy as well? Or Seville,
the birthplace of the Emperor Trajan? Or even Paris, the
ancient Roman Lutetia? And what of London, which Caesar had
conquered?

Russia, for her part, wanted no part of such an award of
Balkan territory to Italy. Her leaders opposed it with all
their might. But the front was collapsing, and Grand Duke
Nicholas feared imminent disaster. So Russia had to accept
it for the time being. In fact, however, she was determined
to sabotage the Allied offer and nullify it at the first
opportunity. And that was how it turned out. The Serbians,
in 1919, would be the big winners in the Balkans. The
Allies' promises, despite the treaties duly signed, were
thus empty, a fundamentally immoral game that made a
caricature out of the so edifying declarations made by the
"defenders of Right" in 1914.

What is left to add about the territories in Asia Minor that
the Allies offered to Sonnino as extra booty? The Italians
had demanded, in addition to the shores of the Adriatic and
the German Brenner pass, that they be granted Cilicia,
Southeast Anatolia, Southern Cappadocia, and the region of
Smyrna as an Asian gift. But the Greeks, when the Allies
were begging for their intervention the following year,
would surely demand in their turn similar annexations in
Turkey! Likewise the Russians, who had entered the auction
room first, on August 1, 1914. For their part, the British
and French had already secretly chosen the morsels they
would cut from the Turkish spoils for themselves. To the
Arabs, finally, in order to entice them into the caravan of
death, camels in the lead, the British in great secrecy had
promised that the territories they inhabited would be
converted into Arab states. Thus the same booty in the same area had been
promised three, four, and five times. And by what right? All
the inhabitants were Turkish subjects, i.e. were
non-Europeans. Had they been consulted? Were they, the ones
primarily concerned, willing to be auctioned off like
chattels? Did they even have the slightest idea of these
barter-treaties concluded behind their backs?It was of no importance to the politicians. They were sold
to the Italians, or more precisely to Sonnino, who, through
his father, had a bit of the Levant in him. In order to
cement the deal, the Allies committed themselves to grant
him even more territory, because, of course, they planned to
snap up and divide the German colonies in Africa, Asia, and
Oceania. To bring Italy into the war, they would have
promised Vancouver and Valparaiso to Sonnino if he had
wanted them.

These treacherous dealings would result in appalling
disputes after the war. In 1918 and 1919, Clemenceau would
heap insults upon Italy. But in 1915, Italy had to be
seduced at any price, especially if the price could be paid
by others. The Allies, if they wished to crush Germany, had
an absolute need of another one or two million soldiers and
a new battlefront, in order to take the pressure off the
paralyzed western front, and to save Russia, whom the
Austrians and Germans had by the throat, from utter
disaster.Thus, on April 26, 1915, was signed the secret Italo-Allied
treaty, would be known to history as the Treaty of London.
Italy pledged to declare war within a month. On May 21,
1915, it was done.In the course of the first weeks the Italians advanced to
the Isonzo and then, in October 1915, to Lake Garda. They
were able to enjoy a few local successes after that. But
they were poorly armed and poorly commanded. At Caporetto
they would suffer a crushing reverse. They would even be
hurled back beyond the Piave."But they're fleeing, my lions!," Marshal Cardona would cry.
French units would have to rush to the rescue. In the end,
instead of being aided by the Italians, the Allies would be
forced to aid the Italians. In a word, they had violated the
most elementary rights of peoples in the Treaty of London of
April 26, 1915, only to embroil themselves in new
complications, military complications that would quickly be
followed by nationalistic animosities. The Italians would no
longer be able to stand the French. The French, in turn,
would hate the Italians.The intervention of Italy in the war in 1915 had no more
effect than a sword thrust into water, or rather into a mire
of blood. An evil business from the start, it turned into a
military disappointment. The Allies gained nothing, and it
cost Italy the blood of her people. For a long time the Italians would detest the French and the British. Out of
that great blighted hope, Fascism would be born.

CHAPTER XXIII

More Balkan Intrigue

Italy's entry into the war was no more than a small
beginning. After Italy, some twenty other countries would be
snared in the traps set out by Messrs. Poincaré and Asquith.Meanwhile, the Germans and the Austrians, on their guard,
had won over another Balkan country, Bulgaria.Bulgaria's strategic position was important. If she entered
on the side of the Germans, she would immediately assure
them and the Austrians contact with their new allies, the
Turks. On the other hand, if she swung to the side of the
Allies, she could be the decisive base for the offensive of
the Russians against Constantinople, their chief objective.
She could form a geographical link for the armies of the
tsar with those of Serbia, their satellite in the Balkans.The idea of having an additional adversary, one the size of
Bulgaria at their throat was bound to cause enormous worry
to the Russians, who had been somewhat relieved by Italy's
entry into the war.Bulgaria was thus, for friends and enemies alike, a country
whose collaboration seemed essential.Bulgaria's leaders knew it. In August 1914 the country at
first stayed quietly in its corner. Officially Bulgaria
remained neutral - it was a time to see who would offer the
most. Just as Sonnino had done on behalf of Italy and as the
Romanians, who would be the last to decide, would do! The
Bulgarians coldly calculated the advantages offered them by
the rival bidders.They felt themselves to be Slays. But they also had the
blood of Mongols and Turks in their veins; and crossbred as
they were with Greeks and even Germans, they were now for
Constantinople and now against her. One of their kings had
married the daughter of the Byzantine emperor, but then
again, Basil II, called the "killer of Bulgarians," had
taken 15,000 of them prisoners and pulled out their eyes as
casually as if he were going through their pockets, 900
years before. And Bulgars have long memories.

In October of 1912, Hartwig, the Russian ambassador in
Belgrade, had organized the first Balkan war.He had launched the Greeks, the Montenegrins, the Serbs, and
the Bulgarians in an assault on the decrepit Turks. The
Bulgarians flattened the Turks at Kirk-Kilisse, at Lule
Burgas, and finally at Adrianople. They approached the
minarets of Constantinople.That was too much for the tsar of Russia. King Ferdinand of
Bulgaria was not an unpretentious person. Just like his
great patron in St. Petersburg, he dreamed of capturing the
capital of the Bosphorus and of proclaiming himself emperor
there. Of course that wouldn't do at all for the tsar.
Constantinople was a Russian monopoly, a fief that the tsar
had reserved for himself.The Serbians, too, were seized by jealousy to see that there
were now two strong countries in the Balkans, when they
definitely intended that there should never be more than
one: their own.The result was the Treaty of London in May 1913, which
legalized Bulgaria's conquests. It had hardly been signed
when the second Balkan war broke out in June, the following
month. All the peoples between the Danube and the Aegean
Seas had been whipped up by the Russian government, and they
fell on ambitious Bulgaria tooth and nail. The Romanians,
the Greeks, the Montenegrins, the Serbs, descended upon
Bulgaria. Even the Turks, who had been the common enemy a
year earlier, joined in. The Bulgarians were easily
defeated. In August 1913, the Treaty of Bucharest stripped
them nearly to the skin: in the west, the Serbians took
Macedonia; the Romanians took Dobrudja from Bulgaria in the
north; and in the south the Bulgarians had to surrender to
the Turks Adrianople, the Hadrianopolis of two thousand
years ago, founded by Hadrian, the native of Seville who had
become emperor of Rome.After that beating, Bulgaria, however completely Slav she
might be, no longer harbored feelings of solidarity, but
rather enmity, towards the Serbians, who had wasted no time
carrying out frightful massacres of the Macedonians, no
sooner than they had been wrested from their union with the
Bulgarians. As for the Russian leaders, they had allowed
Bulgaria to be nearly annihilated to assure their own claims
on Constantinople, Bulgaria no longer saw them as protectors
but as dangerous enemies.

The British and French governments wished to block without
fail an alliance of Germany and Turkey, which would unite
their enemies from the border of Denmark clear to the heart
of Asia Minor, where British interests were dominant.

Winning over Bulgaria appealed to everybody because she had
become militarily strong: the nation had at its disposal
half a million soldiers who were generally known to be very
good fighters.To convince Bulgaria, however, the Allies would have to
guarantee absolutely the restitution of the regions that the
Romanians and the Serbians had taken the year before. The
French politicians favored this approach: it was easier to
give away what belonged to others. Macedonia was not Alsace.With France, then, Bulgaria could easily come to an
agreement - at the expense of her neighbors, as we learn
from the confidential telegram of the French embassy in
Bulgaria, dated November 19, 1914 (No. 99 of the archives of
the ministry of foreign affairs in Paris):Bulgaria is ready to grant us her complete assistance in
exchange for guaranteeing her the acquisition of Thrace as
far as the Enos-Midia line and the return of all the
Macedonian regions, possession of which had been promised
her by the Serbo-Bulgarian treaty of 13 March 1912.By any reckoning, those restitutions cost the French less
than a bottle of Calvados. But the Serbians? And the
Romanians? And the Russians?The Russian government demanded Constantinople as their
chief war compensation which Bulgaria also coveted. The
interests of the Bulgarians and the Russians were in
absolute conflict.On the other hand, the Serbians were unconditional
supporters of the Russians. They were the battering ram the
Pan-Slays meant to drive into the southern flank of the
Austrians. It was thanks to the Serbians and partially for
the Serbians that the Russians, after the double crime of
Sarajevo, triggered the European war. How could they
dismantle the Serbian bastion for the benefit of the
Bulgarians, their direct rivals on the Bosphorus?

No matter. The Russian Pan-Slays could no longer afford the
luxury of playing swashbucklers. They were in dire straits.
The Germans had trounced them severely. Their
commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, feeling lost,
clamored for the intervention of other countries, Italy to
start with, as we have seen. His minister of war was sending
him scarcely a quarter of the artillery shells his batteries
at the front needed if they were to avoid annihilation."I ask for trainloads of ammunition and they send me
trainloads of priests," the grand duke sneered. He would
plainly prefer the Bulgarians to the priests. But Sazonov
blocked everything: "At a pinch he would accept some partial
retrocessions in Macedonia," telegraphed Ambassador
Paléologue, who remained very cautious. "M. Sazonov had just
put forth some other diplomatic plans."Promising King Ferdinand "some partial retrocessions" was
not very much, especially since the Germans were in a position to
promise a good deal more. It wouldn't cost them a pfennig to
offer the Bulgarians the return of so oft partitioned
Macedonia.Paris, impatient, prodded the Russians mercilessly. The
Russian Pan- Slays decided to make the Bulgarians an offer,
"subject to acceptance by the Serbians." It was plain that
the Serbian answer would be no. Old Pashich hadn't covered
up the Sarajevo killings and provoked the war of 1914 just
to go soft for the benefit of his enemy of 1913.At the beginning of the negotiations of August 10, 1914, he
had telegraphed his embassy in Paris: "Serbia didn't go to
war three times in the last two years to bring about
consequences which would make Bulgaria the dominant power in
the Balkans. She prefers anything to such a humiliation."Months went by and Bulgaria, despite everything, remained
fairly well disposed to the Entente. But how to convince the
stubborn Serbians? France and Russia made a joint
representation to Pashich. The only answer they would
receive was a flat refusal: "Not one centimeter of Macedonia
will become Bulgarian so long as I can prevent it."

In these negotiations Russia played a strange role. She let
the Serbs know that she was not a participant in the French
demarche, and that though "constrained and forced into it,
in reality she disapproved the granting of any concession to
the Bulgarians."If the tsarist clique paid lip service to it today, tomorrow
it would do its best to destroy the agreement. On March 4,
1915 the tsar declared to his minister of war: "My decision
is made: Thrace and the city of Constantinople must be
incorporated into the empire." (telegram from Paléologue,
No. 361)Paris multiplied her promises in vain. The French swore that
what Serbia abandoned in Macedonia she would recover a
hundred times over on the Adriatic, the same gift Paris was
offering to the Italians!The Serbs, sly and mistrustful, did not wish to consider
concessions to Bulgaria until after they had wrested from
Austria all the booty they were demanding."No concession to Bulgaria relative to Macedonia will ever
be considered by us before we have achieved the sum total of
our aspirations at Austria's expense." (Pashich December 23,
1914)It was useless, therefore, for the Allies to prolong a
discussin that was falling on deaf ears. "To insist would be
to risk offending Serbia with no chance of success."
(Poincaré, L'Invasion, p. 514)The verbosity of the Serbians would grow ever more
extravagant. They would grandiloquently propose to charge
right through the territory of the troublesome Bulgarians.

"We are prepared," Pashich asserted, "to occupy Bulgarian
territory and thus destroy the military forces of Sofia."When some months later Pashich found himself with his
backside in the waters of the Adriatic, it would be because
he had asked for it.

***

Having been thus spurned, it was inevitable that the
Bulgarians would side with the Germans. On August 1, 1915,
Colonel Gantscher brought the Bulgarians everything they had
lost and more besides. They even saw to it that there was
liberal bribery in Sofia, because the Balkan negotiators, as
we know, always waged the noble "war of Right" with purer
hearts when it was paid for in cold cash. The Bulgarian
finance minister, M. Tuchev, had already accepted, with eyes
half-closed, a little Berlin gratuity of four million gold
marks. This very important leader helped the Germans relieve
themselves of a bit of their financial surplus. Such little
gifts aided comprehension. The Germans and Bulgarians
understood each other better and better. The pleasant comedy
of neutrality went on for another month. At the end of
September 1915, the German Marshal von Mackensen, a Death's
Head Hussar - whose high black kepi with skull and plumes
still occupied a place of honor at his estate in the
neighborhood of Stettin from which, in April 1945, I
directed our battle for the Oder - mustered ten splendid
German divisions south of the Danube. They would be
supported by four Austro-Hungarian divisions. The vise was
closing. Could the Allies not see it?

On the Austrian front, the Italian intervention had only led
to mediocre results. It had been necessary to transfer only
two Austro-Hungarian divisions from the Galician front to
the defense of the mountains of the Tyrol. The Italians had
312 battalions at their disposal, the Austrians 147.
Nevertheless, Austrian losses were limited to a few villages
and a few support points. Grand Duke Nicholas, who had
counted on the avalanche of 37 Italian divisions to greatly
relieve his front, found himself in a worse state than ever.
The Russian front had been penetrated at Görlitz on May 4,
1915, and driven back to the San. The following month, the
line of the San and also that of the Dniester were overrun.
On June 22, 1915 Lemberg fell. In July followed a new
defeat, the capture of Warsaw in Russian Poland. In August,
the Nieman line was broken: the Germans reached the
Berezina, site of Napoleon's brilliant salvation of his
retreating army.Pro-Allied historian Renouvin sums it up: "The results of
the campaign were grave. The Russian armies had abandoned
all of Galicia, all of Poland, all of Lithuania. At the
center of the front, their retreat exceeded one hundred and fifty kilometers. They had suffered enormous
losses from May to October: 151,000 killed, 683,000 wounded,
and 895,000 taken prisoner - that is, nearly half of the
combat effectives." (La Crise européenne, p. 311)Millions of useless conscripts vegetated in the rear depots,
"rough louts" who could not even be trained because no
rifles were available.In such circumstances, could Russia afford Bulgaria as an
additional enemy?

***

The Western Allies hadn't accomplished much more. In Artois,
despite the fact that they massed 29 Anglo-French divisions
against 13 German divisions, and in Champagne, where 39
French infantry divisions faced 17 divisions of the Reich,
they had suffered a cruel defeat: almost twice as many dead
as the Germans (250,000 against 140,000) for virtually
nothing. Joffre himself had been forced to announce on
October 7, 1915 "a protracted posture of defensive
operations."The Anglo-French disaster at the Dardanelles and the
frightful massacre of the Allied troops at Gallipoli at the
end of 1915 had made it necessary to find a refuge for the
survivors at Salonika. Greek neutrality was violated when
the British set up a puppet leader, Venizelos, a cunning
Cretan.Things were going from bad to worse for the Allies. The
British were making one last official effort to try to hold
the Bulgarians to their former neutrality. They had offered
the Bulgarians Macedonia as a war bonus, without the
knowledge of their Serbian allies, exactly the way French
politicians, in August 1939, would secretly concede to the
Soviets the right of passage through Poland, when the latter
country was categorically opposed to it.To support his proposal, the British foreign secretary, Sir
Edward Grey, in a speech to the House of Commons, embarked
on an astonishing encomium of the Bulgarians. It was October
1, 1915. The Russians were engaged in an operation that was
diametrically opposed. After keeping the Allies in the dark
up to the last moment, on their own initiative they
presented the Bulgarians with an ultimatum, demanding that
they break off diplomatic relations with the Germans, an
indication of how sincere was the understanding between the
Anglo-French and the Russians. One said white, and the other
did black. Nothing remained for King Ferdinand of Bulgaria
but to send the tsar of Russia back to his prayers. On
October 6, 1915 Mackensen and the Bulgarians attacked
Serbia: 300,000 soldiers in all, more than half of them
Germans.

***

The 250,000 Serbians, so provocative in 1914, when they had
only the unprepared Austrians to face, panicked at the
onslaught of the Germans. They appealed for French and
British aid, but their allies would not send them so much as
a handful of infantrymen. Belgrade fell the first day.
Thereafter the Serbians fled towards the Adriatic. It was
only after a month of unbroken rout that the Allies decided
to send General Sarrail from Salonika with 80,000 British
and French troops towards the last Serbian valley, almost on
the border of Greece; but they didn't put to flight so much
as a single Macedonian partridge.They became bogged down, then were pushed back. The routed
Serbian army was unable to join up with them. The Serbs
didn't reach the Adriatic and the famous Albanian coasts
that had been promised to everybody until mid-December.
Devoured by typhus, the Serbs no longer had either munitions
or supplies. "Leba! leba!" ("Bread! Bread!"), they cried on
approaching every hamlet. With them rode the old king, Peter
II, in a vehicle drawn by buffaloes. Everywhere they left
behind emaciated cadavers.The Italians, who had occupied Valona, drove the last
survivors towards the mountains of Greece, because, for a
second time, Greek territory had been violated by the Allies
at Corfu. There they left Pashich shaking in his beard and
already about to betray them. The miserable old fox would
soon send emissaries to Switzerland to begin negotiations
with the new Austro- Hungarian emperor, Charles I, and
obtain pardon for the Sarajevo double assassination. As a
sign of his good faith, he would have the organizer of the
crime, Colonel Dimitrievich, shot as a scapegoat.The forces of the Entente would again attempt a Serbian
rescue operation in the region of Dedeagach. There they
would be almost surrounded by the Bulgarians. Germany now
crossed the vast area between Berlin and Constantinople at
will. Her specialists reinforced the Turkish troops on the
Near Eastern battlefield clear to the threshold of the Suez
Canal.It was there, hard by the Red Sea, that the British would
now try recruiting new candidates for death - this time
among the Arabs.Except for the Rumanians, who were delaying their decision,
everyone in Europe who could be sent into the fire had
already been tossed into the frying pan. Millions of
additional soldiers were needed, workers as well. The time
had come to recruit foreigners en masse.

CHAPTER XXIV

Cannon Fodder from the Colonies

An enormous flood of humanity, equal in numbers to the
French and British armies of 1914 (2,300,000 men in the
month of October 1914) was about to pour out onto all the battlefields of the
Allies, from Africa, from Asia, and from Oceania. The gleam
of their countenances, yellow, copper, black, would be
reflected on all the seas of the world. Not even included in
these droves were the considerable armies raised in Canada,
in Australia, in South Africa, etc., often with the
descendants of conquered French, Irish forced laborers, and
dispossessed Boers. The Boers, descendants of Dutchmen and
French Huguenots, comprised half of South Africa's
population. Canada's people included several million
descendants of old French settlers. Australia had been built
with the blood and sweat of Irish people forcibly brought by
the British. They may have been European but had nothing to
do with continental quarrels and the political machinations
of the very British who had oppressed them.What New Zealander, indeed, could have said in July 1914
whether Sarajevo was a Balkan first name or a brand of
Russian caviar? And Mulhouse? And Strasbourg? What Boer from
Pretoria, what Australian Irishman could have explained why
those towns should be German rather than French, or French
rather than German?Sending them to die by the tens of thousands in the stinking
mud of Artois was already morally indefensible. But what of
the Senegalese? Or the Blacks turned gray with cold in the
chalky trenches of Champagne, and the Malagasies transported
like livestock by sea for a month or longer in order to be
cast, stupefied, into the barbed wire entanglements of the
Chemin des Dames - what about them?What could they understand of the war? What could a German
possibly mean to them? And in what way was he different from
a Frenchman? Why was he ordered to kill the one rather than
the other? And above all, why must he be killed for them?How many of them died? A hundred thousand? Two hundred
thousand? Who bothered to count? To put those 850,000
luckless wretches through four years of carnage was an
abominable genocide, all the more odious in that the ones
who recruited all this colored cannon fodder pretended to be their defenders.In the recruitment of coloreds, the British Establishment
had beaten all known records, siphoning off more than a
million Hindus towards their battlefields - or, more
precisely, towards the satisfaction of their interests.
Exactly one million one hundred thousand. Destitute men
recruited in their arid land with tremendous doses of crude
and varied propaganda. Men who wouldn't kill a skinny cow,
nor even a fly, were blindly going out to get themselves
killed by the hundreds of thousands. Anywhere there was a
penny belonging to His Majesty, or a barrel of British oil,
or a leak in the maritime monopoly imposed on the world by
London, these poor devils in their knee-breeches, speaking
eight hundred different languages and marching behind a
British swager stick, would he used ruthlessly.

***

The Hindus, thrown in great numbers onto unknown
battlefields, and the colored subjects of the French
colonies, had rapidly been followed by other masses of
humanity.Noncombatant workers were brought to the factories of France
and the United Kingdom to turn out millions of artillery
shells, which the Western Allies scattered over their
battlefronts in a rain of death. These workers had been
rounded up in the colonies: for example, the future Ho Chi
Minh was brought in from Tonkin. A great many others had
been recruited in China: for example, the future Chou
En-Lai. In all three, million non-Europeans, for whom the
quarrels of Europe were as indecipherable as Sanskrit to an
Andalusian vinegrower, were brought to swell the ranks of
Europe's armies and workers.

***

Senegal, Madagascar, Tonkin, India, and China had not been
sufficient for Europe's needs.As early as 1915 it had been necessary to bring the Arabs as
well into the ranks of the British. The Muslims had then
been promised the reward of the Crescent, that is, a great
independent Arab kingdom from the Red Sea to the Persian
Gulf, if they joined up with the Allies, and especially with
the British troops.The Arabs could be either very dangerous or eminently
useful. Turkey, on the side of the Germans since 1914, was
the keystone of Islam. The caliph of Istanbul was its
spiritual leader. The Turkish empire stretched from Thrace
and the Bosphorus to the approaches of Egypt. Tens of
millions of Arabs were united with Constantinople in the
same active and passionate faith.Even beyond the Near East, the spiritual influence of Turkey
extended to the most distant colonies of the British Empire, especially to the Indies,
where there were more than a hundred million devout Muslims.If the British diplomacy proved to be clumsy, the rulers of
the Empire could anticipate dangerous agitation,
insurrections, and revolts fomented in the very heart of
their empire. An "Islamic holy war" would do them more harm
than a hundred thousand German combatants on the western
front.To gain an alliance with those hundreds of millions of
Muslims (two hundred and fifty million then, eight hundred
million today) and most especially with those who lived in
the bosom of the Turkish empire, was therefore of the utmost
military and economic interest to the British. The
extraction of petroleum - the blood of the modern world -
was undergoing an ever greater development in those
countries, where it constituted a sort of private preserve
of British interests.

***

As early as 1915 some particularly clear-headed British
agents attempted to bring off an agreement with the Arabs.The Arab chiefs who exercised politico-religious power in
the torrid lands of Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia were
nomads first and foremost, without much political
importance. They prayed to Mecca and traveled from oasis to
oasis on their camels. They lived frugally, eating in those
days less caviar and paté de foie gras than dates. In 1915
they were poor and doubtless happier in their deserts than
they would subsequently be in their caramel-colored palaces
in Monte Carlo, Geneva, California, and Marbella, or in
their gold-plated Mercedes at two million dollars apiece.The game of tempting those hardy warriors who lived only for
their faith, was made easier by the fact that the British
had a man on the scene throughout the war, a clever
political representative, T.E. Lawrence, who was discreet,
realistic and possessed imagination: he was like a skinny
Churchill without the cigar and the cognac. He had been a
pupil in France of the Jesuits, the best teachers in the
world.Dry as a camel's tail, Lawrence had lived for years among
the tribes of the Near East, worming his way into the hearts
of the Bedouins, sharing their lives, their dates, their
tents, and even homosexual relations with some of them. To
hear him tell it and to see him dig up piles of stones, he
was an archeologist. In reality he was a British spy.He had learned all the Arab dialects and lived as frugally
as a camel- driver. He would become the great man of
Anglo-Arab fraternization: he probably believed in that in
all honesty, because in his own way he was a paladin. He
would later renounce all honors and official duties when he
saw that Britain had hoodwinked his proteges. Returning to
England in disgust, he would die there in a highly
suspicious motorcycle accident.

In 1916 the plan was definite: Lawrence was going to tip
Turkish Arabia into the British camp.Throughout 1915 there had been great danger. The only
possibility that presented itself to the British at that
time was the Arab region of Hejaz, bordering the Red Sea, an
area that was infertile and sparsely populated. Its coast
was inhospitable, dominated by the winds of the desert and
the burning sun. But in the matter of religion, it was of
decisive importance. Its capital was Mecca, the millennial
town of the prophet, the religious center of the Muslims.
The second town of Hejaz, almost equally famous, was Medina.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims came to Mecca each year.
It offered an exceptional opportunity for a propaganda coup.The emir who ruled the Bedouins of Hejaz, if he took a stand
against Constantinople, would be able to transform the
conditions of the Anglo-Turkish conflict completely. He was
named Hussein. He wasn't very rich, and a few felicitous
subsidies facilitated the initial British contacts. The
money wasn't everything, however. The Arabs were by nature
quick to take offense; independence was their life. They had
always lived free in their deserts, cleaving to the sand and
the wind. They had once possessed one of the greatest
empires in the world, from the Ganges to Narbonne. Cordova
had sheltered one of their most marvelous mosques; Sicily,
their most elegant court. The memory of that great past
hovered in the mind of every Arab like the perfume of a
secret and everlasting vine of jasmine.The Colonial Office did its best to court the Emir Hussein.
On June 15, the British promised him in writing the
reconstitution of a great unified Arab state as soon as the
Turks had been vanquished with the collaboration of the
Muslims. At the time, the British were generous in fixing
the boundaries of the future state. It was no small country:
from Mecca to Damascus, from the Red Sea to the Persian
Gulf. Under those conditions, the military alliance was
worth a try. Sir Henry MacMahon, British high commissioner
of the Indies, and Emir Hussein established the nature of
that "great Arab kingdom," in an exchange of ten letters.
From November 4, 1916 on, Hussein would be considered king
of the new free Arabia. The British pledge was categorical,
though secret, as was everything the British government
signed.

It was almost too beautiful. The Adriatic had already been
promised to the Italians by the Treaty of London, which was
also secret, whereas in fact that territory had been
considered a fief of the Serbo-Russians since the beginning
of the war. With an equally imperturbable commercial sense,
the British had offered Macedonia to the Bulgarians in 1915,
whereas by verbal commitment it belonged to their Serbian ally. In the same
fashion, the territories granted and guaranteed to the Arabs
in 1916 would be granted and guaranteed by these same
Britishers in part to the French and in part to the
Italians. Even the Jews would be guaranteed part of the
spoils, Palestine, which had already been allotted to the
Russians.Moreover, these generous distributors, with the same jealous
secrecy, and behind the backs of the Arabs, who were
theoretically satisfied, had allocated to themselves the
most savory morsels of this same Near East, notably those
where petroleum flowed even more bountifully than the milk
and honey of the Bible. A sextuple distribution!Each one was carried out on the quiet, with the Greeks
ignorant of what had been promised the Italians, the
Italians unaware of what had been awarded to the Russians;
nor did the Russians know what had been assigned to the
French, nor the Arabs what had been promised to the Jews.The British had concluded each agreement without the
knowledge of any of the other confederates. That made seven
separate competitors and beneficiaries who would collapse
screaming when they discovered at the Versailles table in
1919 that there were no less than seven dinner guests
invited to eat the same dish at the same time.

***

Moreover, the British Establishment had no sooner promised
Hussein, the newly-minted monarch, sovereignty over an Arab
kingdom three million square kilometers in area (six times
the size of France) than on March 9, 1916 they personally
secured magnificent possessions for themselves in the same
territories. The signatories of that pact, once again a
secret one, were the Frenchman, Georges Picot, and the
Briton, Sir Mark Sykes, whence the name of the Sykes-Picot
treaty. The British, then, magnanimously allotted themselves
the petroleum of the Tigris and Euphrates area. The French
were awarded the administration of the coasts of Lebanon and
a preponderant influence in Syria, so "preponderant" that it
would be established on the day of reckoning in 1919 with
cannon fire.Those agreements annihilated the commitment solemnly
accorded to Hussein of a "great Arab kingdom," which was
thereby deprived of its most important territories. The
British would end up by bringing an unexpected wolf into the
secret sheepfold: the "Balfour Declaration" of 1917, which
the Allies judged indispensable if they wished to obtain the
support of Jewish finance and the Jewish press in the United
States and force Woodrow Wilson's hand. It would grant the
Zionists a "homeland" at the expense of the Arabs and assure
to each Jewish immigrant a keg of powder that would work
wonders at the proper time.

"This triple play of the Foreign Office," wrote the Belgian
historian de Launay, "the starting-point of the
contradictions in British policy in the Levant, was to be
fraught with consequences."It would be half a century before the Arabs would succeed
more or less in unraveling this sextuple web of closely
woven threads in which the British, between 1915 and 1918,
had imprisoned them from head to foot.Despite the fact that the Arabs made up more than ninety
percent of the population of Palestine in 1918, they would
never succeed in throwing off the Israeli web woven by
Balfour.For the moment, and that was all that interested the British
in 1916, the entire Arab world, mounted on their swift
camels, brandishing daggers and knives, hurled themselves on
the Turks, with Lawrence, who had become the intimate friend
of the son of King Hussein, the Emir Feisal, at their side.
The latter was a splendid prince, as impressive as a prophet
when he appeared, wrapped in his white djellaba and armed
with his dagger set with diamonds. He and Lawrence attracted
new allies. They didn't lack for pounds sterling: British
banknotes for Muslim lives. Thanks to those funds, they
acquired confederates, stirred up the tribes, and assembled
that desert army that British diplomacy alone would never
have succeeded in raising. In addition to cunning and
courage, they had physical stamina, those warriors; though
eating little, they were always combat-ready, tireless,
indefatigable. The Arab people, now often painted as
ludicrous revelers, were then noble, loyal, trusting, and
hospitable. The United Kingdom used them much and misused
them even more.Without them, how far would the British imperialists have
gotten in their riding breeches?In the end, poor Feisal would lose out, and would even be
driven from Mecca by his Saudi rival, ibn-Saud, another
magnificent warrior. But British gold, as it had done in
Europe for centuries, paid all rivals indiscriminately in
order to get them to kill each other advantageously. Europe
was dying due to British duplicity and Arabia was on the
point of dying, too.In the fight against the Turks, the Arabs furnished the
British with splendid reinforcement troops from 1916 to
1918.When facing the Turks in 1916, the British, just like the
French, had seen their big cruisers go to the bottom in the
neck of the Sea of Marmora and their soldiers die by the
thousands at Gallipoli of misery, cold, and typhus. The
route from the Suez Canal to Aleppo was open in 1917 and
1918 only because some tens of thousands of Muslim warriors
throughout all of Arabia heroically carried the colors of
the hope of the prophet at the end of their lances.Those
colors were not exactly the Union Jack! Nor in the course of those battles did
one see shining the six-pointed star that now floats autocratically over
Jerusalem! The Allied war of "Right" in Arabia, as elsewhere, was the Cannon
Fodder from the Colonies omnipotent war of Force.The Europeans ruined themselves morally in the eyes of
foreign peoples, especially the Muslims, by stooping to
these base plots, flinging showers of lying promises
everywhere, cynically hoping to obtain fraudulent dividends.Sooner or later Europe would pay for this, and see the
mirage of too easy swindles vanish in the burning air of
those marvelous countries.

CHAPTER XXV

The Slaughter Drags On

Meanwhile, on the battlefront of Western Europe, the
gigantic hecatombs of 1915 had not sufficed. The Europeans
were going to remedy that by massacring each other more
stupidly than ever.At Verdun in 1916, besides a million wounded, 336,000
Germans were killed, as well as 362,000 Frenchmen. Each bled
the other white. On February 21, 1916, on the first day
alone, the artillery fired more than a million shells,
burying thousands of soldiers alive.Along the front there was no longer a spadeful of earth that
could still be plowed. One no longer bothered to take the
weapons from men who had been buried upright. Photos were
taken; one moved on somewhere else.

Somewhere else was Artois, since each commander wished to
have an offensive to his credit. Falkenhayn had had his
offensive at Verdun. Joffre, almost at the same time, began
to prepare his own offensive on the Somme. He knew that only
by burying the enemy under hundreds of thousands of shells
would he be able to cross whatever remained, if anything did
remain.The home front made unprecedented sacrifices. Vietnamese and
Chinese machinists worked until they dropped. On the first
of July 1916 the bugles sounded the coming victory. The
artillery barrage surpassed anything ever seen before: a gun
fired every eighteen meters. It was like a forest of steel
and resulted in rows on rows of crosses in the cemeteries.Bled white at Verdun, the French were forced to reduce their
profligacy in human lives. At first Joffre counted on
launching an attack with 42 divisions. Then in March it
became necessary to reduce the number to 34; in May, to 32.
Even at that, there were a great many colonials among them.
On the other hand, the British reinforced their contingents:
26 divisions. Thousands of cannon and hundreds of thousands
of exhausted men stretched out across a breadth of thirty
kilometers.For six days the artillery inflicted an annihilating fire on
the Germans. Then French and English troops were sent to the
slaughter. In those days soldiers were still loaded like
mules - sixty-five pounds on their backs to engage in hand-to-hand fighting! At the third German line of
defense, they collapsed from exhaustion."The Franco-British," wrote Marc Ferro (La Grande Guerre, p.
150), "did not get past the insignificant villages of
Thiepval, Mametz, Combles, and Chaume. They were fighting
two against one, but the Germans had carefully constructed
underground blockhouses that made their defense in depth
invulnerable. The Allied attempts of 20 July, of 3
September, and of 20 September 1916, failed like all the
rest."

And the price of these useless battles?The figures were dreadful. By the second day the British
Command had already lost forty thousand Englishmen. One
might think that would be enough. But no. Attack after
attack! Each time throwing away tens of thousands of men."At the end of the battle," Ferro adds, "the British had
lost 419,654 men; the French, 194,451; and the Germans,
650,000."The brief offensive of the Somme had taken more than one
million two hundred thousand victims. Two million dead and
wounded in only two battles in France in 1916! And who would
benefit?Joffre was replaced by a general named Nivelle, who would
only increase the losses in 1917 and be brought down in
turn.All along the front the bodies of those who had died in vain
lay rotting between the lines by the tens of thousands."The infantrymen, mowed down by machine guns," one soldier
related, "lie face down on the ground, drawn up as though at
drill."The rain fell on them inexorably. Bullets broke their
bleached bones. Rats swarmed under the faded uniforms;
"enormous rats, fat on human flesh," in the words of an
on-the-spot witness, who continues: "The body displayed a
grimacing head devoid of flesh, the skull bare, the eyes
eaten away. A set of false teeth had slid onto the rotted
shirt, and a disgusting animal jumped out of the wide-open
mouth."

***

Was a less atrocious solution at least being approached
anywhere else? What was happening at the Italian front?There, too, the Allies had wished to fight it out, but
Austria had cut the ground from under them. On May 15, 1916
she captured Asiago and took 30,000 prisoners. Then she
marked time.After a conference at Chantilly, Allied plans fixed the
dates for a triple offensive: first in France, and when
success had been attained there, afterwards in Italy and in
Russia.

On the Italian front the attack took place on August 28,
1916. They would make four tries at it. On the first try
they captured Gorizia, a quiet provincial seat where,
strangely enough, in a convent are to be found the remains
of the last legitimate pretender to the throne of France,
the Count of Chambord. The Italians, who had a larger force
than the Austrians, carried the position valiantly. But they
could go no farther. A second offensive, in September 1916
failed. Then a third one in October and a fourth in
November. They were stopped at Gorizia.The cost: for the Italians 75,000 casualties, and still more
for the Austrians. There, as in France, the offensives of
1916 had not even served the grave-diggers, who suffered
enforced unemployment thanks to the machine-gun fire.

***

That left the Russians.There, a surprise! When everyone was failing, the Russians
were going to succeed!On August 16, 1916, at the worst moment of Verdun, General
Brusilov, tough as a Cossack hetman and a capable leader
(among so many who were sluggish and of ill repute) launched
an attack through Galicia. He had prepared his attack
intelligently, assembling a heavy concentration of artillery
that finally had sufficient ammunition. The Austrians had
stripped themselves of part of their troops and heavy
artillery in order to carry out their offensive of May 15
against the Italians. If a Russian offensive fell upon them
on the east, they would not be able to resist.A week after Austria had attacked toward Asiago, Brusilov
charged into the Austrian lines. He was going to reconquer
all of Bukovina and part of Galicia. The results were
extrordinary: more than 400,000 prisoners!A hard blow for the Austrians. A thousand of their cannon
had also been captured. They had lost 25,000 square
kilometers of territory (compared with the insignificant
eighty square kilometers won by the French at Peronne).That would be the Russians' biggest victory, and their last
as well. Brusilov's right wing, facing Prussia, had not been
able to take the offensive. There it had run up against the
Germans. The Russians on the right were brought to a halt,
then cut to pieces.Brusilov, fortunate as he had been, had his horse shot from
under him. Once again, the offensive had accomplished
naught, despite its initial success. The Russian army was
weary, practically falling apart; revolution was already
rumbling, as the ground rumbles and smokes before a volcano
erupts. The soldiers deserted in droves. At Kovel the
Germans annihilated the Russian army. Russia's great
opportunity was gone.

***

It was then, however, that the last Balkan country not yet
involved entered the war.In May 1916, when Brusilov was badly mauling Austria,
Romania thought her hour had come. Its government had waited
for two years, not making a bid until it was sure of
winning. Now the politicians thought they could move. But a
month was lost putting the finishing touches on the
declaration of war. It was already too late. Brusilov was no
longer winning. he first retreated, then was swept away. To
join up with him was to board not a victorious cruiser but a
sinking tub.Clemenceau's famous words are well known: "Among all the
swine in this war, the Romanians have been the worst."They had extorted from all competitors both the possible and
the impossible, concessions of territory, loans, and bribes.
As in the case of the Italians, the French and British had
promised ten times as much as the Germans. But the business
with the Reich had been for along time a flourishing one.
The Romanians had found it in their interest to play for
time.Brusilov, swooping down like a hurricane, was definitely
precipitating the downfall of the Austrians, they thought.
It was all over, and it was imperative that they not wait an
instant longer."The lion you think dead might just make a second Serbia out
of Romania with a single swipe of its paw," the
Austro-Hungarian minister of foreign affairs retorted at the
final moment to his Romanian colleague.The latter didn't believe him. On August 27, 1916 Romania
declared war.In three months she was to be totally annihilated. On
November 27, 1916 the victorious German army, let by Marshal
von Mackensen, entered the empty streets of Bucharest to the
shrill sound of fifes.

CHAPTER XXVI

Rout in the East

Romania nevertheless, had been a considerable morsel: 15
divisions, 560,000 men; five times the numbers of the
British infantry on August 4, 1914.Geographically and strategically, her position was
essential. Romania had been able to prevent the Russians,
after August 1, 1914, from swarming into the Balkans. Had
she been united with St. Petersburg from the onset of the
war, she would have assured Russia's linkup with the Serbs
and made it possible either to bring the Bulgarians over to
the side of the Allies or to annihilate them, thus opening
to Russia the road to Constantinople.That was why the Russians had done everything in their power
to break up the defensive military pact which bound
Bucharest to Vienna. Russian activities to corrupt the
Romanians had been considerable."Deciphered communications revealed to me many times what
was going on," Poincaré confessed. He had received M. Take
Ionescu, the most notorious of the Romanians bought by the
tsar, in his private residence in the Rue du Commandant
Marchand. The Romanian doorway to the Balkans was worth its
weight in solid gold. The Russians had declared. themselves
ready to grant them everything: Transylvania, Banat, half of
Bukovina. This generous promise of spoils seemed rather
dubiously optimistic to Poincaré. He wrote (L'invasion, p.
33): "These sales on credit of eastern populations and the
pelts of live bears are a bit hazardous and childish." But
the words are certainly apt: sale on credit of populations;
populations were "sold on credit" to attract allies. M.
Poincaré himself agreed to those sales unqualifiedly. They
involved several million people; Transylvania alone had
3,700,000 inhabitants.Since the Romanians had dawdled so, the Germans, with their
habitual sense of organization, had been able to prepare for
the counterthrust. They'd had the time to bring back some
excellent divisions from the Russian front, which had been
in a state of suspended animation for a month, and these,
together with the Austro-Hungarian divisions, had been
massed in Hungary in two great armies. The greedy Romanian
politicians, thinking only of easy annexations, had stupidly
massed almost all their troops at the same point, at the
foot of the Carpathians in Transylvania. Even at one against two, as was the usual situation throughout 1916, the
disciplined, elite German soldiers always won. It would be
the same in the Carpathians. In eighteen days, from
September 25 to October 13, 1916, 400,000 Romanians were
swept aside, engulfed as if a tidal wave had overflowed
them. The link-up of the German armies would be just a
matter of tactics. On December 6, 1916, at Orsova on the
Danube, they captured the last Romanian troops still
offering resistance. The rest were no more than a horde
fleeing towards the east.One more ally smashed to smithereens. The bad faith, the
"sale of peoples," the annexations, which were wrong by any
standard, had only served to aggravate the western reverses
of the Entente, now painfully parapeted behind their
hundreds of thousands of dead at Artois, Champagne, and
Verdun. For the Russians the Romanian debacle was going to
be the straw that broke their back once and for all.

The last hope of the tsar had crumbled."The government," a delegate to the Russian congress of the
union of towns declared, "has fallen into the hands of
buffoons, sharpers, and traitors." In the Duma, on December
26, 1916, the socialists called openly for revolution: "If
you continue to fight this government by legal means, you
are like Don Quixote, who tilted at windmills."That same evening, Rasputin, the great favorite of the
tsaritza, the corrupt and omnipotent colossus, was poisoned,
bludgeoned, machine- gunned, and thrown headfirst into the
Neva through a hole chopped in the ice.The beaten troops were no longer willing to fight. The
trains of pious priests had been derailed. The famished
people readied their hammers and sickles.The last prime minister, Prince Galitsin, was an impotent
old man. The minister of the interior, Protopopov, was a
dotard who suffered from complete paralysis."At any moment" the British ambassador wrote, "Russia may
burst into flames."Another three months and the tsar would take the final
plunge.

The tsarist regime had finally become aware that it was
sinking in quicksand. Its head and arms were still afloat,
but the sea of blood and mire would soon swallow them up.Germany, on learning of the coming collapse, had tried
discreetly to offer the tsar a helping hand. The Kaiser was his first cousin.
Wilhelm II had never wished to make war against him.
Besides, he more than ever needed all his forces on the
western front in 1916. Negotiations got quietly under way.When the coded telegrams from the Romanian legation, which
were deciphered in Paris, suggested the danger of a Russian
withdrawal, the French and the British politicians were
terrified. Clemenceau roared, "Then we are goners!" It was
imperative to quell immediately any possibility of a German
offer and to offer more themselves, to promise so many
benefits that the beneficiary, overwhelmed by the wealth of
the gifts, could not refuse. The system had worked well with
the Italians, the Romanians, and the Arabs.The draft of a Franco-Russian treaty was drawn up by the
secretary- general of French foreign affairs, Berthelot, the
eminent Paris collaborator with the Balkan countries, who
was said to have personally composed the text of the Serbian
refusal of a joint committee to study the crime of Sarajevo.
In 1916, in a new offer, Berthelot awarded the Russians the
Austrian crown territory of Galicia, Hungarian Ruthenia,
that part of Poland ruled by the Germans, and Constantinople
and the Straits. Armenia as well, which had already been
promised to the Armenians. Plus a large part of Asia Minor,
including the Holy Land, which had been granted earlier to
the Emir Hussein.With that document the French government cancelled its
promises of independence, previously given with great
fanfare to the Czechs, the Ruthenians, and the Poles. As the
Pan-Slays had anticipated even before 1914, they would be
reduced to the role of subjects in three Russian
viceroyalties entrusted to three grand dukes.

When Ambassador Paléologue received the text in St.
Petersburg, with orders to transmit it immediately to the
government of the tsar, he exploded with indignation and
sent Paris the following telegram, which is almost humorous
in view of the fact that this French diplomat had
unquestionably urged a war of conquest with Alsace-Lorraine
as the prize:"Our country is not waging a war of conquest, but a war of
liberation, a war of justice." And Paléologue added: "Our
British and Italian allies will never go along with us, will
never consent to such an increase in territory, an increase
that will extend Russian power clear to the Mediterranean,
clear to the Suez Canal."It was then necessary to send a French mission to Russia
posthaste, so fearful was Paris that St. Petersburg would
make peace with Germany behind its back.

Like Paléologue, the French minister, Ribot, refused to
preside over the mission. Finally, the presidency of the
mission was entrusted to the colonial minister, a pudgy
little man from the south of France, not very polished,
named Gaston Doumergue.In return for the enormous territories the Pan-Slays were
receiving, he was supposed to persuade the tsar and Sazonov
at St. Petersburg to sign the following text, containing the
official commitments Russia was making to France:Alsace-Lorraine will be returned to France unconditionally,
not with the reduced boundaries set by the Treaty of Vienna,
but with the boundaries it had prior to 1790.Its borders will extend as far as those of the ancient duchy
of Lorraine and will be drawn in accordance with the wishes
of the French government in such a way as to reincorporate
in French territory all the iron and steel works of the
region as well as the coal fields of the Saar valley.All other territory situated on the left bank of the Rhine
that is now part of Germany will be completely detached from
the latter country.Any such territory not incorporated into the territory of
France will be formed into a neutral buffer state.Nicholas II warmly encouraged Doumergue: "Take Mainz, take
Koblenz, go as far as you like" (Marc Ferro, La Grande
Guerre, p. 241).When the mission was over, little Gaston, grinning from ear
to ear, triumphantly stated to the press (Petit Parisien,
Figaro, Le Temps): "We have a closer and more cordial
understanding than ever! Russian collaboration has not
failed and will never fail."This on March 6, 1917! A week later to the day, on the
stroke of midnight, the tsarist regime would go up in smoke.
Little Gaston had shown a shrewdness and farsightedness that
was nothing short of stunning.Briand, for all his astuteness, had been even less
perspicacious than little Gaston. Historian Ferro writes:The Russians considered that the Straits comprised the
compensation offered in return for Alsace-Lorraine. In
return for the left bank of the Rhine, they wanted liberty
of action on their western border: that is to say that
France should abandon the cause of Polish independence.
Briand hesitated before acquiescing, but he resigned himself
to it on March 10, 1917. (La Grande Guerre, p. 242)Thus Briand, too, agreed to the treaty, but "without
England's having been informed."Once the French had crossed the Rubicon, the British would
growl, but there was nothing they could do except acquiesce.
The year 1916 had seen the battlefields of France strewn
with the bodies of hundreds of thousands of British
soldiers, and the waters of the Dardanelles dotted with the
drowned sailors of their fleet. For Russia to abandon them
would mean that the entire might of Turkey would be able to
swing round on them on the Euphrates as well as in the Sinai. Like the others, the
British rulers told themselves that promising wasn't the
same as giving. All of them would be as slippery as eels
when they were called to account for their promises at
Versailles in 1919.

In March of 1917 the Russians and the French were equally
blind.On March 8, 1917, in starving St. Petersburg, the mob broke
into the butcher shops, grocery stores, and bakeries and
cleaned them out. Protopopov, the minister of the interior,
learned of the incidents without emotion, saying, "If there
is going to be a revolution in Russia, it won't be for
another fifty years."Reminiscent of the tsar, who, two days before the war, had
written in his personal notebook, "Today we played tennis.
The weather was magnificent." And on the following day: "I
went for a walk by myself. It was very hot. Took a delicious
bath." Happy the empty heads that don't even feel the hot
breath of passing cannonballs.Minister Protopov's "fifty years" would last just four days.
On March 12, 1917, the Russian government, abandoned by the
troops, disappeared. The duma and the St. Petersburg Soviet
on March 14 set up a provisional government. Apparently it
was not yet more than halfway revolutionary. For its
president and figurehead it had Prince Lvov. Princes always
abound in revolutions. Sometimes they are named Philippe
Egalité, are fanatics, vote for the decapitation of their
relatives, and afterwards, as a well- deserved thank-you for
services rendered, are themselves made a head shorter.To counterbalance the princely crown of Lvov, a Jewish
socialist was appointed to the impromptu government:
Aleksandr Kerensky.On May 13, 1917 the tsar's train was blocked by rioters. On
the night of May 14 he abdicated, then went to bed. "I sleep
long and moderately," he wrote calmly in his imperial
notebook.For a moment he would still try to have his son accepted as
regent of the empire. Then Grand Duke Michael. The latter
would be Michael II for a few hours, then abdicate in turn.
Then came the republic.

***

The Allies wanted to believe in that new republic."Perhaps it is the renewal of Russia," commented Briand.London and Paris made haste to send eager delegations.
Several cabinet ministers and some socialist deputies went
running to the new Mecca, notably wealthy Marcel Cachin, the
future leader of the French Communists. They were
overflowing with the eloquence and enthusiasm of fraternity. They even went so far as to approve imprudently
the formula of the Soviets, "Peace without annexations or
requisitions."The slogan didn't correspond to the agreement signed by the
tsar just before his overthrow, allotting hundreds of
thousands of kilometers of territory. In that treaty,
endorsed by both parties, the tsar delivered almost the
whole of Germany to French ambitions. On the other hand, the
Cossacks were to be able to ride clear to Jerusalem.The new Russian republicans would at most allow a referendum
in Alsace-Lorraine, "under the control of an international
commission."Another affirmation which was very little in line with
Allied policy: "The responsibility for the war lies with all
of us."What then of the horrible Kaiser solely responsible, and the
gibbet already prepared for him?The illusions were stubborn, and they became ever more
dizzying. The Allied delegates rushed to embrace the leaders
of the revolutionary government. They parted from their new
brothers with tears in their eyes."They set out as shameless partisans," Ferro tells us,
"concerned about the interests of their governments, and
they returned from Russia singing the glories of the
fatherland of the revolution." (La Grande Guerre, p. 332)With an eye to keeping up appearances, the Russian minister
of foreign affairs had made it a point to be soothing in his
messages to the Allies. His foreign program: "To combat the
common enemy to the finish and without hesitation" and to
respect "the international obligations incurred by the
fallen regime in a steadfast manner." Prince Lvov having
been liquidated without delay, Kerensky became minister of
war. He left to harangue the troops at the front. The
peasant soldiers thought only of deserting the army and
getting back to their villages in time to obtain their share
of the distribution of land, the only point in the
revolutionary program that interested them. The military
command fell apart; some generals were assassinated; others
vanished.With a glorious lack of comprehension, Nivelle, the French
commanding general, nonetheless demanded that the
disintegrating Russian army go back on the offensive.In Paris, the future Marshal Pétain, always calm and
clearheaded, retorted with extreme skepticism, "The Russian
army is nothing but a façade. We must be prepared for it to
collapse as soon as it makes a move."Miraculously, it did move. The Russian offensive demanded by
Nivelle got under way on July 1, 1917, on a forty-kilometer
front: 23 divisions commanded by Brusilov, the perennial
prime mover. The first day yielded astonishing results; his
troops defeated the first line of Austro-German forces. But
there wasn't a second day. Brusilov had taken 10,000
prisoners; they would be the last. Old Pétain was right.
Some Russian divisions refused to attack. There was "no way
to compel the troops to fight," Brusilov acknowledged.

The enemy counterattacked; this time it was the Germans, the
soldiers par excellence, driving the Russians in a frantic
flight through Galicia, which was completely lost in ten
days, with 160,000 killed, wounded, and taken prisoner. A
month later, General von Huffier would have only to give the
Duma a little shove to take possession of Riga.It was a rout.In France, too, it would soon be close to a rout.

CHAPTER XXVII

Trembling Resolve

The Allied attacks which, it was anticipated, would bring
the Germans to their knees in 1917, were to be three-fold.First, the attack of the Russians. Once the tsar had fallen,
Brusilov had valiantly delivered his knockout blow. But the
attack had shattered against the enemy.The Italian attack hadn't come to much in the course of the
spring. Prime Minister Rosselli (who in the world still
remembers that name?) was a decrepit old man, a spark barely
alive. In the parliament, the socialists were rebellious.
"It's not tolerable for the Italian people to have to face
another winter of war," they declared, already feeling cold
months before Christmas.As in the preceding year, it was the Anglo-French front
which would have to deliver and, if necessary, receive the
big blow.The new commander-in-chief, Nivelle, didn't intend to be
satisfied with "pecking away at the front." He wanted a
breakthrough battle.Lyautey, Pétain, and even Painlevé, the minister of war, put
scarcely any credence in an attack. Nivelle played the prima
donna: "We shall break through the German front whenever we
wish to."The tactics he envisioned were to attack a weak point by
surprise. In one day, he asserted, or at most two days, the
German front would be broken, and "with the breach thus
opened, the terrain will be clear for us to go where we
will, to the coast of the North Sea or to the Belgian
capital, to the Meuse or to the Rhine."

Nivelle was opposed by Marshal von Hindenburg, the powerful
and unshakeable German military commander. He was seconded
by General Ludendorff, the true military genius of the First
World War.They were not about to give the French either a weak point
or a chance of surprise. They knew that strategy must not
stifle tactics. They had suspected the plan of their
adversaries, which in any case had been announced with great
fanfare by the newspapers.

Hindenburg and Ludendorff, silently and with the greatest of
care, had prepared huge, impregnable concrete positions
twenty kilometers back. Just before the French offensive,
they fell back to these lines with great stealth, The
terrain in front of the Germans was now desolate, virtually
impassable, and flooded over a wide area.The best officers of the French general staff were worried.
The offensive was being lured into a trap. Nivelle, however,
was cockier than ever: "If I'd been giving Hindenburg his
orders, I'd want him to pull back just as he's done."Now that the Germans had made things so easy for him, he
launched the attack on April 9, 1917. The Anglo-Canadians
went over the top first, then the French. The attack
extended from the Oise to La Montagne de Reims. The most
famous battle position would be Chemin des Dames.Years later I passed through that ghastly landscape. Human
skulls still lay around all over. Tourists used to carry
them away in the luggage-racks of their bicycles. 40,000 men
were killed in the first few dozen hours.

Nivelle thought he could carry the day by hurling tanks into
the battle, makeshift tanks in which the gasoline storage
was placed forward.In one afternoon, 60 of the 120 tanks burst into flames. The
crews were burned alive.After three days, the Allies had to break off the battle
without having overrun even a single one of Hindenburg's
bunkers. The returning soldiers were in terrible condition.An officer who witnessed their return from the front wrote,
"I have never seen anything more poignant than the two
regiments streaming along that road in front of me all day
long."First there were skeletons of companies, sometimes led by a
surviving officer supporting himself with a cane. All of
them were marching, or rather advancing with short steps,
knees giving way, and zig-zagging as though intoxicated.
Then came some groups that were perhaps squads, perhaps
sections, you couldn't tell. They went along, heads down,
despondent, weighed down by their gear, carrying their
blood- and dirt- soiled rifles by the slings. The color of
their faces scarcely differed from the color of their
uniforms. Mud had covered everything, dried completely, and
then been soiled afresh with more mud. Their clothing as
well as their skin was encrusted with it. Several cars came
driving up with a roar, scattering this pitiable flood of
survivors of the great hecatomb. But they said nothing. They
had lost even the strength to complain. An unfathomable
sorrow welled in the eyes of these veritable war-slaves when
they came in sight of the village rooftops. In that movement
their features appeared taut with suffering and congealed
with dust. Those silent faces seemed to proclaim something awful: the unthinkable horror of their
martyrdom. "Some territorials who were watching beside me
remained pensive. Two of those territorials silently cried
like women."Thus ended, in April 1917, General Nivelle's race to Ostend
and the Rhine.

The British Marshal Haig had thought he would do better than
his French colleague. He launched his attack between Cambrai
and a Flemish village with a complicated name:
Passchendaele. He was assisted by Belgian troops and by a
French contingent.Marshal Haig, too, thought to carry the day with a massive
assault by his tanks. They penetrated the first German line
of defense just in time to be turned into an enormous
inferno. There, too, half the tanks were hit squarely in the
fuel storage section and destroyed amid the screams of crews
being roasted alive in their flaming coffins.Afterwards it was the usual butchery. Passchendaele was one
of the biggest slaughterhouses of the war. The number of
English, Scottish and Irish who were killed or wounded there
is well-nigh incredible: 400,000, "for nothing," the
historian Ferro adds. None of which would keep Joffre, the
French general, from writing with reference to his British
friends, "I should never dare leave them to guard the lines;
alone, they would be routed." Or Pétain from adding, in
1917, the year of Passchendaele: "The British command is
incompetent."As may be seen, among the Allies brotherhood reigned.

The news from Italy did not gladden the Allies.In the Lizenzo valley, amid rock walls a thousand meters
high, the Germans and Austrians during those months were in
top form. They had finished off the Russians. They occupied
all of Serbia and Romania as well.For the first time, Hindenburg and Ludendorff had agreed to
second the efforts of the Austrians, by giving them 37
German divisions. Certain moves of the new Austro-Hungarian
emperor, Charles I, disturbed them, and by reinforcing him
they hoped to restore his enthusiasm.Seven German divisions would serve as the battering ram of
the attack. Two traitors had communicated the Austro-German
offensive plans to the Italian General Carmona several days
in advance. Despite the fact that he had 41 divisions at his
disposal, General Carmona was worried about "symptoms of a
growing spirit of revolution among the troops." It was
already October 14, and snow was falling. In three days the
principal peaks had fallen to the Germans. From then on the
valley was open. The disaster of Caporetto was under way. Some Italian units heroically
sacrificed themselves, but others surrendered in entire
divisions. Countless deserters turned tail and fled. The
Tagliamento was crossed. The Italian army couldn't pull
itself together until it reached the Piave. The results were
added up: not too many had been killed, about 10,000. But
the number of Italian prisoners taken was immense: 293,000.Moreover, 3,000 cannon-half of the entire Italian artillery
forces-had been lost, and more than 300,000 rifles, 73,000
horses and mules, and the principal food and supply depots.Caporetto meant the complete loss of morale in Italy.

The phenomenon was not limited to the Italians. Armies
everywhere were grumbling. The soldiers had suffered too
much. They had seen too many massacres. In Russia they had
set off an explosion, but it was plain that in France, too,
there was danger that mutinies would break out and the front
give way.In August 1914 the deluded people had embarked
enthusiastically on "a short war" that would be not so much
hard work as a romp. At worst, the French and the Russians
would meet on the banks of the Spree at Berlin within three
months!As may be seen in photos of the period, in Berlin, Vienna,
London, and Paris a popular delirium held sway. At Munich a
young fellow named Adolf Hitler fell on his knees to thank
the heavens for that stroke of good luck. The thousands of
trains and the first columns of trucks bore destination
points chalked on them in big letters: Berlin for the
French; Paris for the Germans. It was going to be a fine
trip. But it had finally gone off the tracks.The common people knew nothing at all, neither how horrible
war is (and it had reached new heights in the West during
the past half century), nor how Freemasonry had directed
their members in high office to use all possible
subterfuges, lies and diplomatic forgeries to pursue
interests alien and detrimental to them, the majority of
common people.The Sazonovs, the Balfours, the Poincarés, with cynicism and
hypocrisy, were leading the people to genocide.There had been the great massacres of 1914, then those of
1915, then those of 1916. Now it had started all over again,
for the fourth time, in 1917. More than half the conscripts
of 1914 were dead. Whatever their country, men wanted no
more of it.

There was great misery on the home front as well. The women
were exhausted by the difficult job of cultivating the fields in
the absence of the men, substituting their feeble strength
for the hundreds of thousands of requisitioned horses; and
with turning out the millions of artillery shells in the war
factories alongside alien laborers from the colonies. People
were cold and hungry.In the beginning the masses had been in complete agreement,
because in those days the patriotism of the people was a
thousand times more active than it is at present. The
working man was a nationalist. The average middle-class
person got a lump in his throat when a military band passed
by. The socialist deputies, too, had voted for war, the
French as well as the German. The ballyhoo in the press had
roused the people. Anyone who had protested against the war
in 1914 would have been lynched.That was no longer the case in 1917.The slaughters of 1917 brought the soldiers to the end of
their morale. Many French units rebelled. In each of sixty
French battalions or regiments several hundred men on
separate occasions flatly refused to return to combat. At
Soissons, two regiments which had mutinied attempted to
march on Paris. The Internationale was sung and red flags
were waved. It was St. Petersburg in miniature. It wasn't a
general revolt, but there were more than forty thousand
mutineers nonetheless, who for several days made it almost
impossible to maintain order. The military leaders had to
resort to reprisals. There were thousands of arrests: 3,427
men were sentenced, 544 of them condemned to death. Most
horrible of all, soldiers had to shoot their comrades. There
were 116 executions.Without thousands of imprisonments, the war in the west
would have been irretrievably lost by the Allies, just as in
Russia, and France would have been engulfed in revolution.

It was the same everywhere.By hurling their countries into a war of conquest, or of
reconquest, in 1914 (Alsace-Lorraine on the one side, the
Balkans and Constantinople on the other), the warmongers had
destroyed the foundations of Europe. Her economic basis was
shattered. Her peoples were decimated. International order
had been struck a direct blow.Only the firm grip of certain statesmen, who had no use for
democratic whims, here and there stemmed the catastrophe.
Thus Clemenceau, who came to power on November 14, 1917,
hatchet in hand, quelled dissent ruthlessly."I'll burn everything, even the furniture," the fearless old
man of seventy-six years declared. "Neither treason nor
half-treason, just war! Nothing but war!"The so-called "war for freedom" could not be won except by
muzzling freedom. The Radical Clemenceau, forcing the panic-stricken
parliament to turn to him, became the absolute master of
France in 1917. He immediately crushed all antiwar
opposition, imprisoned his defeatist adversaries, shot those
who were traitors or who looked like traitors to him. Even
Poincaré, the Masonic provocateur of 1914, who had had no
choice but to go along with Clemenceau's nomination, had
been shut up in the gilded cage of the presidential palace,
after having had a muzzle clapped over his mouth.

In the beginning the Socialist party (a third of the German
deputies) had acted patriotically. Then its extremists had
organized strikes in the war factories, turning thousands of
workers away from their jobs. The strikes had seriously
impeded production. As for the army, the most disciplined
army in the world, it remained and would remain brave and
orderly right up to the last day of the war. But the German
political arm would not have its Clemenceau.Wilhelm II kept far away from his troops. He was neither a
strategist nor a tactician. He was enthusiastic when his
troops were moving ahead, dismayed at every defeat. "Pray
for us," he telegraphed at the moment of the Marne to his
worthy empress, who was busy with her knitting.Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg totally lacked the psychology of
a fighting man. He had been replaced by a completely unknown
functionary. Michaelis, who had formerly been in charge of
the replenishment of stores in Prussia. A third chancellor
had succeeded him, a man named Hertling, a Bavarian member
of the "Society of Resolute Christians," and an aged
bibliophile. Power, to him, instead of being a marvelous
instrument of direct, complete, and decisive action, was a
"bitter chalice." He didn't drink it for very long.
Arteriosclerosis deprived him of his cup. He went from one
fainting fit to another. At last he received extreme unction
"in a cloud of incense."

Things were worse still in Austria-Hungary, where four
successive chancellors, Berchtold, Martinitz, Seidler, and
Esterhazy, succeeded each other in the space of a year.Germany's great misfortune was this: if the French had had a
Hertling (a resolute Christian floating in incense), as
council president; or if they had simply kept their
Vivianis, Ribots, and Painlevés (hesitant, shaky, tired old
democratic nags), or if, on the contrary, the Germans had
possessed a political leader like Clemenceau, cleaver in
hand, the fate of the world would have been different.Clemenceau had been called the father of victory, and he
deserved it.

Without him, despite the immense sacrifices of the French
soldiers, there would have been no victory for France. She
would have gone down, if at the height of military disaster,
she'd had no one to lead her but a bearded little hypocrite
like Poincaré, Europe's most efficient gravedigger.Since 1914, France had been beaten every year. "One more
hemorrhage like Verdun, and France will fall in a faint,"
the newspaper L'Heure had seen fit to write. Out of the
3,600,000 men of 1914, there remained only 964,000 surviving
combatants at the end of 1917; 2,636,000 were dead, wounded,
prisoners, or missing.More than ten of the wealthiest departments of France had
been occupied for nearly three years. War profiteers were
arrogantly living the high life. Financially, France had
been bled white. It had been necessary to issue sixty
billion francs in bonds for the national defense. As far as
loans went, some had been covered only to the amount of 47.5
percent.Small investors, their heads turned by the hired press, had
laid out billions in the Russian loans before 1914, and now
found themselves ruined.As for agriculture, it had declined thirty to fifty percent
(fifty-two percent of the French soldiers were peasants).
Prices had already gone up 400 percent and would reach 600
percent by the end of the war. The bread was vile, but
censorship prohibited anyone from writing that "the mixture
of corn and wheat flours can cause alopecia." Syphilis was
ravaging the country, but there, too, the censors were
vigorously plying their scissors.The information blackout, ordered by narrow-minded and
despotic military men, was unbelievable. Prefects could send
reports to their ministers only after they had been
submitted for censorship. The ignorance in which the
civilian members of the government were left was such that
the president of the council once learned only from his
florist that the army general headquarters was moving from
Chantilly.It was imperative that the public be completely ignorant of
anything that might awaken its suspicions, such as, for
example, the news that serious mutinies had taken place or
that two million Hindus and blacks were being used on the
battlefields. Or that anti-colonial troubles had taken place
in Senegal, Dahomey, and Annam, following protests against
the deportation of native workers and soldiers to Europe. Or
that without the labor of women, there would be a shortage
of artillery shells at the front. It was only in a small
informal meeting that Joffre had seen fit to state that "if
the women working in the factories were to stop for twenty
minutes, France would lose the war."

On the other hand, the press abounded in marvelous
pronouncements aimed at stirring the masses. General
Fayolle: "Joan of Arc is looking down on us from heaven with
satisfaction."

La Croix: "The history of France is the history of God."Lavedan, member of the Academy: "I believe by the power of
all that is holy in this crusade for civilization. I believe
in the blood of the wounds, in the water of benediction. I
believe in us. I believe in God. I believe. I believe."If Lavedan still believed in that wonderful jumble, soldiers
believed less and less "in the blood of the wounds," and the
public had more and more doubts about the regenerative
effects of "the water of benediction." Far from benediction,
what France was experiencing in 1917 was hunger, hundreds of
thousands of widows and orphans, and millions of soldiers
ground up in the mill of trench warfare.British censorship was no less fanatical and idiotic. On its
orders, the press asked that the works of Wagner, Mozart,
and Richard Strauss be outlawed. Leon Daudet in Paris titled
an article "Down with Wagner." Darer and Cranach narrowly
escaped being taken down from the walls of the Louvre and
the British Museum.Now, after three years of war, in France as well as in
Germany, socialist and syndicalist leaders, who were only a
handful in 1914 but were many in 1917, spoke against these
prohibitions and tried, despite a thousand complications
arranged by the police, to rescue public opinion from this
appalling state of affairs.

Some of them were undoubtedly ringleaders ready to serve any
cause, with an eye to making a row, and often hired for that
purpose. For example, the Communist agitators of Berlin. In
1915, after two previous meetings in Bern, a pacifist
conference had been held at Zimmerwald in Switzerland. It
brought together a total of thirty-eight delegates, but an
attempt at Communist infiltration had been evident. Lenin,
Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev were there, teeth bared like
Siberian wolves.The following year, the son-in-law of Karl Marx, Longet, and
his followers held a pacifist demonstration at the French
socialist congress of April 16, 1916 which attracted much
attention. Their motion demanding a peace with no
annexations obtained a third of the ballots: 900 votes
against 1800.Another conference was held at Kienthal. Its manifesto
already had the tone of the October 1917 harangues at St.
Petersburg:Proletarians of Europe! Millions of cadavers cover the
battlefields. Millions of men will be disabled for the rest
of their days. Europe has become a giant human
slaughterhouse.Above and beyond the borders, above and beyond the fields of
battle, above and beyond the devastated countryside,
proletarians of all countries, unite!

At Kienthal, Lenin's proposal to turn the war of nations
into civil war triumphed, receiving two thirds of the votes.
On February 18, 1917, the committee set forth its plan of
battle to the proletariat: to turn their weapons not against
their brothers, the foreign soldiers, but against
imperialism, the enemy at home.One astonishing note: a million copies of that
antimilitarist manifesto were distributed in Germany; in
France, on the other hand, only ten thousand copies could be
distributed in secret.In Paris, anyone who was not for the war was a traitor, so
much so that the syndicalist leaders were all given a
special physical examination by a review board. None of
them, however bowlegged, escaped induction. The chief of the
Second Bureau, Colonel Goubet, saw to it that special
treatment was reserved for them, ordering them "to certain
Saharan regions where the rolling of roads coincides with
the shaping of character, and from which one does not always
return."The wish was expressed clearly and elegantly.

***

Pacifist propaganda during the First World War was above all
the work of the left and especially of the extreme left.The industrialists, the financiers, and the middle classes
should have been more concerned than anyone about the
senseless destruction of wealth as well as the massive
elimination of the cream of the labor force, the youth.The conservatives, on the contrary, during those four years
lived in a hermetically sealed world of claptrap and
illusions. It was the intellectuals, from Barrès to Paul
Bourget and Henri Massis, who most eloquently praised the
extraordinary benefits of the war and most execrated the
savagery of Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and the other
German barbarians.Alone in this tumult of hate, Romain Rolland published his
Au-dessus de la mélée [Above the Battle] which for all its
title was nothing but a long lyrical sigh in favor of peace.

The men of the left, French or foreign, were not necessarily
agents of Moscow and enemies of society. Often they were
simply friends of mankind.One of the latter was Camille Huysmans, secretary-general of
the Second International, a Belgian with the long ringed
neck of a restless boa. He was intelligent, caustic, cynical
for its shock value, and profoundly tolerant. In 1917, Kamil
- he was called that in Antwerp-had urged pacifism along
rational and strictly logical lines. The previous
conferences in Switzerland had been too impassioned, and above all too much controlled
by Lenin and the other Bolshevik theoreticians, for whom the
world was an object to be manipulated cold-bloodedly. A
serious conference was needed in which the adversaries would
meet again to deal in depth, without prejudice and without
intemperate language, with the possibility and the
conditions for a peace of reconciliation. As
secretary-general of a Second International stricken with
paralysis, Huysmans dreamed of restoring to the
International the use of its limbs. It was in that spirit
that in 1917 he convoked what has been called the Stockholm
Conference. There the direct representatives of the enemy
peoples were to get to know each other, exchange views, and
weigh the chances of a "peace without annexations or
indemnities."Was such a peace possible? Would it be possible to end a war
in which all had been partly responsible, in which neither
side, despite several million dead, had achieved decisive
results, or seemed in a position to do so?The matter was worth discussing. It was not discussed,
however, and for a good reason: those principally concerned,
the French delegates, had been forbidden to attend the
conference, the Paris government having refused to grant
them the passports that would have enabled them to make the
trip.The French government did not want anyone talking peace in
any way, shape, or form. To talk of peace would be to make
concessions, to admit to a few faults, to renounce certain
claims.One could imagine that in similar negotiations the enemy,
especially the Germans, who had been the big winner up to
that point-would not grant everything, acknowledge
everything, deliver everything. But was it really
unreasonable to be reasonable? In 1917, there were already
seventeen million men dead, wounded, or taken prisoner.
Trying to save the lives, blood, and freedom of millions
more who would be lost if the war continued, was that really
so criminal? Wasn't all that blood worth a few sacrifices, a
few blows to one's ego?Many delegates came to Stockholm but the most important, the
French, were not there, kept at home by their police, who
would thenceforth consider them dangerous suspects.

Even a man like Camille Huysmans, who was not French, became
the object of a relentless persecution by the French police
after the Stockholm Conference. They whipped up campaigns to
discredit him everywhere. He was "the man of Stockholm,"
paid of course by the Germans. The newspapers repeated it
over and over without letup. He was so defamed that after
the Allied victory in 1918 his own followers, who were
ashamed of their leader, barred him in Brussels from access
to the Maison du Peuple.For ten years he suffered a persecution that was comparable
to the ordeal, in France, of M. Caillaux. Even before 1914
Caillaux had understood that the French and the Germans were
interdependent, and that it was necessary to effect a reconciliation with the Germans
instead of fighting them. For his effrontery, he was
repudiated for several years. Camille Huysmans had to
expiate his bid for peace for a longer period: ten years.It was then that King Albert I, the Roi Chevalier of the
Allies, summoned Huysmans to his palace at Brussels.Up to that time the Belgian monarch had refrained from
speaking. The passions and the hatreds were such that to say anything
slightly favorable to "the man of Stockholm" would have been
to commit suicide. In 1917, before going to the Stockholm
Conference, the so-called agent of the kaiser had visited
King Albert in person on the Flanders front, where he
commanded the Belgian troops facing the Germans. Huysmans
wanted to be sure that the congress he was organizing at
Stockholm did not constitute either a challenge or an
obstacle to the military and political plans of the man who
occupied the very first place, morally, on the Allied side.
The others, Poincaré, Grey, Sonnino, Bratianu, had been
double or triple dealers. Albert I, on the other hand, was
the victim of his country's geography, which made it a
railroad turntable through which all trains claimed the
right of passage. His own conduct had been noble and proper.He listened carefully to Camille Huysmans. His
straightforward answer was, word for word, as follows:"You are right. It is necessary to negotiate. No second war,
whatever my government may think of it. Carry on your efforts. I will
protect you.""I could have told the truth," Huysmans wrote to de Launay,
the Belgian historian, "but I held stubbornly to what the
King himself said, and that's the way it was."It was handled rather solemnly. The king later cleared
Camille Huysmans-who later became prime minister-in the presence of
two Belgian generals "whom he had summoned and charged in my
presence to tell the truth," Huymans himself related on
coming out of the royal palace.But that honest man paid for his efforts-which, however
ill-considered in view of the passions of the time, were
humane and correct in any event-with ten years of being slandered."To destroy my effectiveness," Huysmans stated, "the French
secret service tried to represent me as a man in the pay of
Germany. In Belgium that accusation was believed in the
French-speaking part of the country and also in Brussels."There were also certain semi-official
negotiations, involving Austria-Hungary and Germany, which might have made it possible as
early as 1917 to re-establish peace. How and why did they
fail?

CHAPTER XXVIII

Stabs at Peace

The proposals of the new Austrian emperor, Charles I, were
the most important.In 1916 the young monarch had just succeeded Franz Josef,
the emperor as old as Belgium (both were born in 1830). Thus
Charles I had not been involved in any way in the unleashing
of the war in 1914. He had little liking for the German
Kaiser, his ally by chance. His two brothers-in-law,
Princess Sixtus and Xavier of Bourbon Parma, were fighting
in the armies of the king of Belgium on the western front,
against the Germans.Charles I was neither a reformer like Joseph II nor a
tactical genius like a Metternich. He was not very aware of
political realities, but he was sincere and bursting with a
goodwill that on occasion made him naive. He was profoundly
honest, but of course honesty in politics seldom carries one
very far.

***

Charles I had no capable ministers at his side, or at least
any he could trust: Berchtold, the clumsy bungler of July
1914, had been replaced by a gloomy-eyed Hungarian, and then
by Count Czernin. The latter, sensing that everything was
tottering beneath him and that Charles I himself was headed
for a fall, proved unreliable.Charles I had an intense desire for peace, a two-fold peace:
domestic peace, by granting to each of the separate
nationalities-Czech, Slav, Hungarian, and German-an equal
area and an autonomy of very broad rights; and peace with
foreign countries as well. The young emperor was not only
prepared to renounce all annexations, despite the fact that
Serbia and Romania were then in the hands of the
Austro-German forces, but was also ready to grant his Balkan
adversaries important territorial concessions. To Italy,
too, which up to then had achieved little on the
battlefield, he would cede the Italian-speaking part of the
Tyrol. To Serbia, responsible for the assassination of the
Austrian crown prince but now thoroughly whipped, its
government having taken refuge at Corfu, he was willing to
grant broad access to the Adriatic Sea.

Generous almost to the point of naiveté, Charles I was ready
to offer still more to the Allies, who at that time were at
a decided disadvantage on every front.Taking the initiative of offering peace was fraught with
risk for Charles. The Germans were watching him, and they
were much stronger than he was. They had the power to crush
Austria in twenty-four hours. Up to then, the Austrians had
been dependent on the constant help of the Germans. Left on
their own in 1914, they had been beaten in Serbia, indeed
chased out of Belgrade. It had required the intervention of
German and Bulgarian divisions to send Pashich packing off
to Corfu in the Adriatic.In Galicia, when Brusilov had overrun them, captured 25,000
kilometers of territory, taken hundreds of thousands of
prisoners, and been on the point of bursting through into
Hungary, it was the German army again that had saved the
Austrians from disaster.Even in Romania, it was General Mackensen who had conquered
Bucharest, not an Austro-Hungarian general.The Germans thus had some rightful claims on the regime in
Vienna, all the more so because without the untimely steps
of Austria in 1914, Germany almost certainly would not have
been dragged into the war.By running the risk of antagonizing the Kaiser, Charles I
showed commendable courage.The Allies should surely have given immediate consideration
to these actions on the part of Charles I, especially since
he had not entrusted the negotiations to dubious underlings,
but to his own brothers-in-law, who were officers in the
Allied armies.The emperor sent his meddlesome mother-in-law, Maria
Josepha, to Neuchâtel in Switzerland to meet her two sons,
Sixtus and Xavier de Bourbon-Parma, and to charge them with
the imperial peace mission. An offer to meet made to enemies
does not necessarily obligate one side to reveal its hand,
to commit itself in advance, and list its concessions, while
the other remains silent and presents a countenance as
inscrutable as the sphinx. The two Belgian officers upon
whom the emperor was ready to rely had brought along
preliminary demands drafted by the Allies which were very
severe, indeed almost insolent in the light of the fact that
the French and the British had just suffered terrible
defeats in Artois, in Flanders, and in Champagne, and had
left several hundred thousand men lying dead on the
battlefield.The preparatory position of the Entente was brutally frank.Any conditions preliminary to a peace acceptable to the
Entente must include the following indispensable demands:(1) The restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to France without
compensation of any kind on the latter's part.(2) The re-establishment of Belgium(3) The restoration of Serbia with the addition of Albania.(4) The restoration of Constantinople to Russia.

These were enormous demands, which Charles I had to accept
before negotiations could be admitted even in principle. The
more so in that in 1916 no part of Alsace-Lorraine had yet
been reconquered by the French; on the contrary, the Germans
were occupying the ten wealthiest departments of France;
moreover, the Serbians no longer had possession of a square
centimeter of their territory; and the Russians had been
unable to send a single warship to Constantinople, while the
Allies had been completely thwarted when they tried to reach
the city by way of the Dardanelles.The astonishing thing was that amid all these considerable
claims, there was not the slightest allusion to the booty
the Italians were to get, although the Allies, by the secret
Treaty of London in 1915, had nonetheless promised them the
Tyrol and millions of new citizens in Europe and Asia.Nor was there any question of what the Albanians might think
about being delivered to the Serbians, or the Turks about
being delivered to the Russians. It was a demand that the
peoples of the Adriatic and the Bosphorus merely be put on
the block, and not be consulted at all. Where, then, were
the famous self-determination principles which had been
trumpeted so virtuously?Charles I did not allow himself to be discouraged in the
face of these exaggerated demands. He sent a reply which was
in large measure an acceptance to the two princes, who
returned to Neuchâtel: he was in agreement with regard to
Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium. With regard to the territory of
the South Slays occupied by his troops, he proposed the
creation of an autonomous kingdom consisting of
Bosnia-Herzegovina (Austrian territory before 1914), Serbia
(by then already captured), Albania, and Montenegro,
"existing on its own, but within the framework of an
Austrian federation which for centuries has proven its worth
as a unifying body."That last proposal was not final. It could be discussed. The
function of a conference is discussion. Emperor Charles I
had been conciliatory in the extreme. His initial
concessions were enormous, since he was a member of a
military coalition in a victorious position dealing with an
Allied military coalition which in 1916 had reaped nothing
but humiliating and terribly bloody defeats from Flanders to
Gallipoli.But he was unaware that the Allies he was appealing to were
bound by a series of secret and often contradictory treaties
which bound them to deliver extravagant spoils to their
confederates. No honest negotiations could alter these
arrangements.Prince Sixtus, after several trips back and forth to
Neuchâtel, saw Poincaré in Paris. He got in touch with
Briand as well. After meeting those two, Xavier and Sixtus
then went to see Emperor Charles I in person. In great
secrecy and at great risk, Charles went to meet his two
brothers-in-law in Luxembourg-two Belgian officers in
civilian clothes, in territory occupied by the Germans. The
Allies still believed then (March 22-23, 1917) that they
would win the battle of Artois, where instead they were
about to be ground up like a round of beef."I want peace, I want it at any price," said the young
emperor of Austria-Hungary. He declared himself willing,
after the initial basis of agreement had been reached with
the Allies, to put as much pressure as he could on Wilhelm
II to take part in the negotiations. Otherwise he would not
hesitate to sign a separate peace.Charles I would go yet further. Verbal offers might be
misinterpreted or even disbelieved. He seated himself at a
desk and there, in the town of Luxembourg, where he risked
at any moment being found out and seeing brothers-in-law
arrested, wrote on March 24, 1917 a three-page letter
committing his proposals to paper.In that handwritten letter, Charles I heaped civilities upon
his adversaries: "The traditional bravery of the French army
is admirable," he wrote. He felt "deep sympathy" for France.
It was "just to give her back Alsace-Lorraine." Belgium's
rights "must be fully restored." As for Serbia, he was no
longer speaking of a federation but was ready to accord her
not only complete independence, but "equitable and natural
access to the Adriatic" as well as broad economic
concessions.All that Austria asked was that Serbia, enlarged and
enriched at her expense, should no longer tolerate on her
soil such anti-Austrian criminal organizations as the Black
Hand, which had been so conspicuous at Sarajevo. This was an
entirely understandable request.Pashich would be so impressed by the scope of these
proposals that he would send emissaries to Switzerland to
discuss them. To soften up the Austrians, he would even have
his ex-confederate, Colonel Dimitrievich, shot.The document written by Charles I, which was of potentially
decisive consequence to Europe, is now available to the
world. De Launay, the famous Belgian historian, has
published it in its entirety.Had it been taken into consideration in 1917, the lives of
several million people might have been saved, and Central
Europe would not have become the white world's great land of
injustice in 1919, and the most menacing colonial territory
of the USSR twenty-six years later.On March 31, 1917, Prince Sixtus saw Poincaré again.
Poincaré continued to equivocate, but nevertheless thought
he could no longer leave his Allies in ignorance of the
facts. At that time the French president of the
council-there were four different ones in 1917 up to the
time Clemenceau came in and cleaned house-was Alexandre
Ribot. He was an old fellow, whose nerves were shot. He
peered owlishly at anyone he was talking to from behind
glasses as yellow as a couple of lemons, which he was
forever wiping clumsily. What he feared most was not the
Germans, but that his own parliament that might lash out at
him.The announcement of peace negotiations meant risking a
parliamentary rebuke. What if they turned his old bones out
of the presidential chair? He refused to see Prince Sixtus, despite his being an Allied
officer and the bearer of peace.It was still necessary, however, to inform the Allies and
warn Lloyd George. There the terms of the problem were
already completely changed. For Britain, what counted was
not Strasbourg, or Brussels, or the Dalmatian coast; it was
the German fleet and the German colonies. Charles I had not
included them in his basket of gifts. Then there were the
Italians. On April 18, 1917, at St. Jean de Maurienne, Lloyd
George and Ribot had confirmed and amplified the 1916 Treaty
of London. They'd had to deal with Minister Sonnino. The
only thing that interested Sonnino in a peace with Austria
was getting Trentino, Trieste and the eastern shore of the
Adriatic. That was what the French and the British has
promised Italy to induce her to enter the war. Nothing less
would satisfy her. The indefatigable Prince Sixtus started
off on his way again to a meeting with an envoy of Charles I
at Zug, in Switzerland and a second meeting at Lausanne.
Finally, though an Allied officer, he proceeded secretly to
Vienna on May 8, 1917 to see Emperor Charles. From the
Hofburg he brought back the emperor's agreement drafted by
the minister of foreign affairs, Count Czernin, "accepting
the principle of an exchange of territories with Italy." So
an initial proposal was offered there as well. Sonnino, with
his considerable cleverness, was trying for further
concessions, which as a matter of fact had already been
offered in 1915, when Prince von Bülow had attempted to halt
Italy's entry into the war.That was not the tragedy. Charles I had asked that in
exchange for numerous concessions he be guaranteed the
integrity of what would be left of Austria after losing at
least Bosnia-Herzegovina, Trieste, and Trentino. The naive
emperor did not suspect that powerful Masonic and
anti-clerical forces within the French government did not
intend Austria-Hungary, the most important Catholic country
of Europe, to be in existence after the hostilities. Secret
agreements had already been made that would carve her up,
dismember her provinces, and barter away millions of her
inhabitants."Once this basis of agreement is accepted," Charles I
reiterated to Prince Sixtus, "Austria-Hungary will be able
to sign a separate peace."Were there any obstacles? Yes, there were. The French
translation made by the prince was questionable; it did not
seem to correspond to the text of Vienna drafted in German.
It was possible that Prince Sixtus had embellished the offer
a bit, which negotiators are apt to do but such
misunderstandings were usual at the start of negotiations:
negotiations were made to remedy such things, to make
everything clear. On the Allied side, especially on the side
of the French, everything could easily and rapidly be
brought into harmony.But Ribot had clamped his big yellow spectacles onto his
nose. He was going to sabotage everything. Why? In a month
it would be clear.Sixtus proceeded to London. He saw Lloyd George and the
king, and discussed the limits of the possible peace: Germany
included? Or a separate peace with Austria alone? To decide
that, Lloyd George proposed a meeting between the British
and the French at Compiègne. That Allied conference would
never take place. France would not reply, and consequently
Britain would not attend. Ribot had done his best to scuttle
it even before Lloyd George set out on his journey. He had
hoisted himself up on his creaky old limbs at the rostrum of
the French assembly to launch this cowardly and provocative
denunciation:"They will come to ask peace, not hypocritically as they do
today in this shifty and circuitous manner, but openly and
on terms worthy of France" (applause)."Hypocritically" and in "a shifty manner" were strong words
when the Austrian emperor himself and officers of the
Belgian army had offered everything and risked everything
with naive sincerity.Thus the French minister publicly committed an infamous
deed, not only offering a scarcely disguised insult to
Charles I, but informing the emperor of Germany that his
fellow monarch of Austria-Hungary had proposed peace
negotiations to the Allies behind his back.A bit later Clemenceau would go still further. The
unfortunate Charles I, in order to escape the wrath of
William II, issued the denial that is standard in diplomatic
affairs. Clemenceau, when he had become president of the
council, would read to the assembly Charles' secret letter
with the obvious aim of creating a fatal estrangement
between his two enemies. It was a base move that wrecked any
chance of future peace negotiations with Austria.Why did Ribot, "that old malefactor," as Prince Sixtus would
call him, and Clemenceau after him, allow themseves to sink
so low?In the first place, they were no longer in a position to
discuss an equitable peace, since half a dozen secret
treaties, signed by their colleagues and the British, had
put up for auction some hundreds of thousands of square
kilometers of Europe and tens of millions of her people.
Only an overwhelming victory would make it possible for them
to honor their commitments. Any other issue of the war would
bring them insoluble problems, starting with the delection
of their dearly bought allies.Austria was also the target of a relentless conspiracy, that
of Freemasonry, for two centuries a mortal enemy of that
vast Catholic country. Freemasonry wanted Austria-Hungary's
hide, wanted it rended, lacerated, in pieces.Ribot was one of the most important figures in French
Freemasonry. Benes, the Czech, was the most important figure
in the Freemasonry of Central Europe. He laid claim to the
entire northern part of the Austro- Hungarian empire with
such voracity that in 1919, with the Masonry of the entire
world behind him, he would swallow up more non-Czechs than
Czechs.Precisely at the very moment of these negotiations, a world
congress of Freemasons met in Paris, the seat of the sinister Grand
Orient, on June 28, 1917 to "create a society founded on the
eternal principles of Masonry." Austria-Hungary was the
exact opposite of that society. During the latter part of
June, 1917 in Paris, Freemasonry passed a death sentence on
Austria-Hungary proclaiming that minimum conditions of peace
required the independence of Bohemia and the "liberation" of
the diversenationalities of Austria-Hungary, "goals which could not be
realized without the annihilation of the Austro-Hungarian
empire." Just three days before the rabidly anti-Catholic Masonic congress had been
held, Ribot had been bent on bringing about the downfall of
Charles I. Ribot's speech, indeed, had been the forward to
it. It was the choice appetizer preceding the banquet at
which the conspirators of the left would devour Catholic Austria-Hungary, prepared for them in advance with malignant
gloating by old Ribot.Astonishingly, the Germans, who might well have considered
themselves justified in angrily reproaching Austria-Hungary,
their ally, for having secretly treated with the enemy, were
extremely reserved in their protests. Why? Because they had
done the same thing. Two officers of the Belgian army had
been the liaison agents of Charles I. By a strange
coincidence, the agents of the Reich were Brussels
civilians. Both of them had been warmly encouraged, and at
the same time, by King Albert I, the same who had been
anxious to give his support to the socialist Camille
Huysmans when he, as president of the Second International, was endeavoring to
call a peace conference at Stockholm.After the war the Belgian king was everywhere held to have
been the model ally. A statue was erected to him at Paris in
which the warrior faithful beyond all others was advancing
on horseback towards victory. In truth, King Albert
distrusted the war aims of the Allies from the first day of
the war to the last. He never allied himself with them
completely. He wished to remain in his historic role of a
neutral, knowing-history had taught him well-the cupidity of both sides, which were always ready to
occupy and use his country.Even in 1914 he had refused to join up with the routed
French and British armies in the south. On the contrary, he
had withdrawn in the direction of Antwerp. After the autumn of 1914 he had clung to the Yser,
a little Belgian stream, stubbornly refusing to leave his
country.He did not believe a single perfidious word of the fine
speeches of the Allies: liberty, justice, rights of man,
which they used to cover up their own interests. He had no choice but to be guided solely by the
interests of his country. The interest of Belgium, wedged
between two powerful nations, and to whom foreign wars could
bring nothing but grief, could only be Peace.Albert I had let his two officers of Bourbon-Parma travel to
Switzerland, to Luxembourg, to Vienna, to London, and to
Paris. He had seen them return empty-handed. However, another possibility had
arisen, this one stemming from the Germans and launched in
Brussels, his occupied captial.

The new negotiations involved, on the Belgian side, three
principals.The first was Cardinal Mercier, the primate of Belgium. He
was a tall, emaciated philosopher, a sovereign spirit, of
supreme dignity and majesty. As a young student, I would be
discovered by him. He was my first teacher. I still see him
scrutinizing me, bright-eyed like a watching bird, majestic
despite his gauntness, like a Michelangelo prophet.The second negotiator was a Frenchwomen, a Rochefoucault
become Belgian through her marriage to a member of the house
of Merode, in 1914 headed by a count, today by a prince.The third was a man of business, the benzine king of
Belgium, Baron Evence Coppée.The German who would be the decisive element in these other
secret, semiofficial negotiations was the Baron van der
Lanken. As an embassy attache, he had known the young Paul
de la Rochefoucault. The fortunes of war gained him a key
post in the military administration of Belgium. The Countess
of Merode, concerned for all who suffered the misfortunes or
the rigors of the occupation, had many a time spoken to van
der Lanken, much as she had done in Paris before the
hostilities. In particular, she had got him to accept a
petition from Cardinal Mercier requesting pardons for two
men negotiations, their envoy was officially authorized to
make an initial pardoned seventeen, every Belgian then
awaiting execution.It was thus that the Belgian primate, wishing to thank the
German diplomat, had gone to see him at the home of the
Countess de Merode. Then for the first time they spoke of
the possibility of re-establishing peace. The cardinal
challenged the representative of the Reich to assist in
negotiations between Germany and the Allies. The German took
the cardinal at his word and set off for Berlin.In October 1916 he saw the cardinal again, who, after
hearing him, expressed his dissatisfaction. A new trip to
Berlin at the beginning of 1917 resulted in a meeting at Bad
Kreuznach between the chancellor of the Reich, the secretary
of state for foreign affairs, Marshal von Hindenburg, and
General Ludendorff. This select assembly, at the end of
April 1917, agreed to the concession of certain territories
of the Reich southwest of Alsace and in French-speaking
Lorraine. It wasn't yet at the point of the French army
entering Metz to the sound of trumpets, but a trend was
taking shape. It must not be forgotten that in the spring of
1917, the Germans had the upper hand; yet they were prepared
to cede some territory."When I made contact with the government of the Reich,"
Lanken later wrote, "it appeared straight off that Berlin attached the
greatest importance to this endeavor. Chancellor von
Bethmann-Hollweg and the secretary gave me encouragement at
every point."A more astonishing piece of information:"It was the same with Field Marshal von Hindenburg and with
General Ludendorff, otherwise so difficult to approach. As
is fitting to note at once, during the entire course of this
affair General Ludendorff never failed to ask for
information about it and concerned himself with the success
of what I was doing."That was not, to be sure, total approval, but it was the
manifestation of a desire on the part of the Germans to
negotiate. When during the entire course of the war was
there any such attitude on the part of the Allied
authorities? When did a French or British politician or
military man ever make a similar gesture?The Germans might have said no for fear of having their
enemies say that they had realized they were going to lose
the war. Yet, even before the negotiations, their was envoy
officially authorized to make an initial concession
unconditionally. A clever negotiator, once he had that
thread in his hands, would no doubt pull out more of the
skein. The name of that negotiator was even mentioned. Baron
van der Lanken had indicated he would begin the negotiations
between the Germans and the Allies with one of his Paris
acquaintances from before the war, a man who was surely the
most ingratiating politician in France: Briand.Between the two world wars, Aristide Briand became the best
known French politician in Europe, his voice grave and
softly harmonious, his mustaches hanging down like a
drooping bush, poorly dressed in skimpily made business
suits, and dropping ashes everywhere from his everlasting
cigarettes. In June 1917, he had resigned from his position
of prime minister three months too soon. Despite that he
could be the perfect unofficial delegate of the Allied
authorities.The Countess de Merode, having obtained a passport from van
der Lanken, left for Paris where she immediately met with
Briand. She delivered a proposal for an interview with
Lanken in Switzerland. Briand immediately went, on June 19,
to confer with Poincaré. The latter was not very
enthusiastic. Nevertheless, he authorized Briand to see van
der Lanken.Meanwhile, a second Belgian démarche had given impetus to
the action of the princess at Paris. A second emissary had
arrived in France to further support van der Lanken's
proposals. He had not wanted to act, however, without first
receiving the consent of the head of the Belgian government,
M. de Broqueville, who, like his king, had taken refuge at
Sainte Adresse, near Le Havre. He sent them the letter from
van der Lanken, offering to meet with an Allied emissary.
Briand, Coppée, and Broqueville planned to meet in Paris at
the Ritz.

Broqueville was affirmative: "The German proposals are of a
serious nature." Briand was impressed. He made up his mind
and got ready. But alas, France was a democracy: the Ribot
government fell. A new government was formed by Painlevé, a
confused but honest mathematician, who was better at
juggling logarithms and hypotenuses than diplomatic
subtleties. It was necessary to start preparing the way all
over again. Coppée, Briand, Poincaré, and the new prime
minister weighed the possibility of negotiation."We have to go all the way," Painlevé concluded.Poincaré was still cool to the idea, but didn't oppose it.
He was a man who rarely stood in opposition to things: He
cast his net, stood stock-still, waited for the other party
to get caught. Ribot, who had already torpedoed the peace
project with Emperor Charles I, remained in the cabinet as
minister of the interior, which was not very reassuring.
Briand outlined a plan of negotiations that went further
than the German proposal, as was only to be expected.
Instead of a part of Alsace-Lorraine, he laid claim to all
of it, and he demanded war preparations as well; on the
other hand, "France will not raise the question of the left
bank of the Rhine nor the political and economic freedom of
the German people."As in poker, both of the two parties had thoroughly studied
their cards. The obstacles presented were by no means
insurmountable. This sort of preliminary was usual in even
the most modest negotiations. Coppée, informed before
returning to Brussels, saw van der Lanken. Briand himself
proposed September 22, 1917 as the date of the meeting in
Switzerland. Coppée confirmed to him in writing the
confidence he now had in their success."This turn of events had given the Countess de Merode and me
an absolute conviction that Germany is ready to make the
greatest possible concessions, so that the withdrawal from
the occupied territory, indemnities and reparations, as well
as the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to France, may be
envisaged with a virtual certainty of success."Coppée had reason to express these views. On September 11,
1917 the Kaiser himself had presided over a meeting at the
imperial palace of Bellevue, decisions of which went far
beyond the concessions granted at Bad Kreuznach. All the top
military and civilian leaders had attended the meeting. The
Germans, needless to say, were not going to give up
everything before their emissary had even talked to Briand.
But if van der Lanken was to be believed, they would have
gone a long way."My plan," he explained in his memoirs (p. 223), "was to get
Briand, by the manner in which I listened to him, to lay out
his views as plainly as possible, and to a certain extent to
learn his final `price.' Then to get to Berlin the fastest
way, press for an immediate answer, and get it back to
Briand in Switzerland with all possible speed."DeLaunay, the Belgian historian, who scrutinized with a
magnifying glass every passage of the dossier and interviewed every possible
witness, sums up the convictions of the Kaiser's unofficial
emissary:"Lanken assured Coppée and the Countess de Merode that he
had received orders to conclude the peace and that if the
proposals he was charged to make to Briand were deemed
insufficient, he would immediately ask Berlin for new
instructions." (Histoire de la diplomatie secrète, p. 84).He would later add: "Given the weariness of the
belligerents, a solution could have been found to the
problem of Alsace-Lorraine."On September 21, 1917, the eve of the meeting with Briand,
Baron van der Lanken detrained at Ouchy-Lausanne and put up
at the Hotel du Chateau. The Countess de Merode and Baron Coppée were
already in town, at the Beau Rivage Hotel."Lanken," de Launay explains, "expressed his conviction that
the proposed interview would be favorable to a peaceful
decision. He confirmed to them that he'd had contact with the German
general staff again and that the negotiations were beginning
auspiciously."The meeting of the next day was to take place at the villa
of a French general who was a friend of Briand. They waited
in vain for Briand to arrive. On September 23, Baron van der
Lanken, empty-handed, took up his valise, shocked at this evasion on the part of the
French negotiator, without an excuse or even an explanation.It was Ribot, the Freemason, who had made it all miscarry.
With honeyed words he had put the question to the British
government: "Wouldn't it be a good idea to avoid the trap
set for M. Briand?" What reply could the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom have
given except that it was necessary to avoid falling into a
trap? What trap? As with Vienna's proposal, the German
proposal had been properly and courageously brought forward by impeccable intermediaries
under the aegis of the Allied government of Belgium."What seems to us unspeakable," DeLaunay wrote, "was
Poincaré's weakness, Ribot's bad faith ... Millions of men
were still to die for two Alsatian fortresses."All the attempts for peace which were still to follow,
including the one entrusted to Noullens, the French
ambassador at St. Petersburg, would routinely miscarry, one after another. The plans of
Freemasonry were to be pursued implacably, however great the massacre. Germany and
Austria-Hungary were to be annihilated.

CHAPTER XXIX

President Wilson, "Colonel" House

It is impossible to speak of the many significant peace
attempts of the First World War, all of them failures,
without mentioning the peace negotiations of the Americans,
or more precisely of Woodrow Wilson, the president of the
United States.Those negotiations, too, failed. But they were of a quite
special nature; and they were going to change the face of
the world.In the first place, they were the earliest of all the
attempts, since they were begun as early as 1914, before the
start of the war. Their sincerity quickly became suspect.
They were fairly objective in 1914-from May to July in the
first instance, then in the month of September after the
great German victories in France and Prussia-and they even
revealed a certain tendency to acknowledge that Wilhelm II,
the emperor of Germany, was the only one who desired peace.
From 1915 to 1917 they would slightly, then strongly favor
the Allies, although that was rather hypocritically
camouflaged because it was imperative not to displease the
American voters, who were 90 per cent for neutrality. The
secret adherence of Wilson's government to the Allies would
end in the spring of 1917, with the entry of the United
States into the war.The great and total evolution of the war dates from that
point, when it was transformed from a European war to a
world war. The paltry French-British-Russian-German quarrels
would be left behind. On the one hand the tsarist power
would collapse, and Communism would take its place. On the
other hand, a giant America would hurl the enormous weight
of its power, untried and until then almost unknown, onto
the scales of world politics. Intervention by the United
States would change everything. It would give an entirely
new orientation to the European war then bogged down in
Flanders. It superimposed a completely new world of
elemental power on the death throes of an anemic Europe, a
Europe that was stupidly destroying itself as a world power.In a few decades, two giant land masses would bring to an
end two thousand years of European expansion. From 1917 on,
the war of Europe was no longer anything but civil war; the
world was changing forever.There is no explaining the First World War without an
examination in depth of the role that the United States of America assumed
between 1914 and 1918. Who at that time was the driving
force in the United States? Everyone spoke of Wilson, who
quickly became considered the master of humanity's destiny.
On the other hand, few speak of Colonel House, a secret,
almost mythical figure, who was the all-powerful mentor of
President Wilson. Who was this shadowy Colonel House?Who, indeed, was Wilson?

***

Woodrow Wilson, the president of the United States, was an
austere and strict Calvinist, the son, grandson, and
son-in-law of Presbyterian ministers."He said his prayers on his knees morning and night
throughout his life. He read the Bible every day. He wore
out two or three Bibles in the course of his life. He said
grace before every meal." (Bullitt, President Wilson, p.36).Bullitt has left an impressive portrait of this "puny
fellow" with the "big soft mouth":He had light gray eyes and lackluster blond hair. He was
thin, pale, and weak. His eyesight was extraordinarily
deficient. He was hardly out of his baby clothes when he had
to wear glasses. Moreover, from infancy on he had intestinal
trouble which plagued him throughout his life. He was
coddled by his father, his mother, and his two older
sisters, but these troubles persisted, giving him migraine
headaches and stomach ailments. He was so sickly that his
parents didn't send him to school. He didn't learn the
alphabet until he was nine years old and didn't know how to
read until he was eleven."His homely features were made still more plain by the
eyeglasses riding on his prominent nose and by his
astonishingly bad teeth. Although he never smoked, they were
mottled with caries, so that when he smiled, brown and blue
stains appeared amid flashes of gold. He had a livid
complexion, with unhealthy red blotches. His legs were too
short for his body, so that he looked more distinguished
seated than standing.He was so poorly informed about international affairs that
he couldn't tell one country from another on a map.
Parsimonious, he was horrified at the cost of a cable and
hesitated a long time before sending one. His only
diversions were billiards and proper family reading sessions
in the evening.

Looked at this way, however, the portrait of Woodrow Wilson
does not adhere strictly to the realities, or as least it is
not complete, because throughout his career Wilson was
simply a screen for others. The real master of the United
States in those days, right up to the fateful Versailles peace conference was not Wilson but the man who owned him
outright and had made him president of the United States and
partner in 1917 of the Allies in the First World War. This
mentor of Wilson's was a mysterious"colonel" who did not occupy any official post whatsoever.
Secret, insinuating, he worked strictly behind the scenes
and under cover. He was not even a colonel. His name was
Edward Mandell House."The public was mystified, that's for certain," wrote
Charles Seymour, the well-known American history professor.House's father, of Jewish origins, had come from England;
his middle name was that of a Jewish merchant who was a
friend of his father. His father, on arriving in America,
had first been a Mexican citizen. Then he had fought to make
Texas into a republic. Astutely, he had taken his pay for
that collaboration in land. Later he parted company with the
federalgovernment to the North, then threw in his lot with it anew.
"Four different flags," he laconically said.The family became very rich through the trade in cotton by
sea during the "somber and stormy" nights of the War between
the States. Arms trade and munitions made them money as well. These activities were
capped by the purchase of an entire block in the city of
Galveston.The son, Wilson's future manager, was raised there in an
environment of gunpowder. "My brother," he related, "one day
had half of his face blown off. He remained disfigured for the rest of his life. I
don't know how I managed not to kill myself a hundred times
over."In school he carried a little pocket arsenal: "In addition
to a revolver, I had a big knife. Those weapons let me keep
my comrades at a respectful distance." He spent some time in the mountains "where he
could do some shooting."

When he was seventeen years old he fell in love with another
kind of fighting: political battles, and became a sort of
secret agent for William Tilden, the Democratic presidential
candidate in 1876."I ended up realizing that two or three senators and a like
number of representatives, in concert with the president,
directed the affairs of the country all by themselves."In twenty-five years he would succeed in reserving the
direction of the country for himself, not just sharing it
with two or three senators.Was he at least a normal being?"One day," he recounted, "when I was soaring very high on a
swing, one of the ropes broke and I fell on my head."Did it crack? In any event, the rope of the political swing
did not break. His father died and left him a large fortune
made during the Civil War, and House set out to conquer
Texas politically.

Texas in those days, as he described it, was "a frontier
state where the law was in the service of the individual
with the keenest eye and the quickest hand, and where you
died with your boots on."One day, in a bar in Colorado, a giant of a man insulted
him: "I grabbed my six-shooter and cocked it, but the
bartender jumped over the counter and threw himself between
us. Five more seconds and I'd have killed my man."

Thus prepared, he embarked on the career which would one day
make him the man who directed the thinking of America's
president.House became the campaign director for a gubernatorial
candidate of the Democratic party, a man named Hogg, who was
elected primarily because of House's drive."That campaign," House recalled, "was a real battle."Thanks to Hogg, House was abruptly promoted from a Colorado
barroom brawler to the rank of colonel. Afterwards he would
never be called anything but "the colonel." Colonel of what?
Of nothing. He had never passed a single hour of his life in
a military barracks, but Governor Hogg had the power at that
time in Texas to name anyone at all an honorary colonel.

***

Texas grew too small for him."I'm beginning to get tired of it," he sighed."Go to the front lines! That's where you belong from now
on!" Hogg told him. The front was the East Coast; it was New
York. His attention was drawn to the governor of New Jersey,
a man named Woodrow Wilson. According to police records, he
hadn't killed or robbed anyone; his speeches, very academic,
were oiled with an abundance of the moral platitudes so dear
to the voters, and he was said to be easily managed. Prime presidential material! proposed House, his choice made, immediately mobilized his agents: "I
prop to divide the forty Texans into four squads and to entrust
each squad with the assault on one of the doubtful Southern
states." He set up propaganda centers in every city, as
would nowadays be done in the launching of a new brand of detergent.On November 5, 1912, Woodrow Wilson, riding on the shoulders
of Colonel House, was elected to the presidency.Wilson formed his first cabinet, and House made it a point
not to accept any post. But his hand was everywhere, invisible, and quick
as lightning.At the end of 1913, when Wilson sent him to see Wilhelm II,
he had armed him with this simple and astonishing
introduction: "In the United States, he is the Power behind
the Throne." It was Wilson himself who spelled power with a capital P. It was in that capacity that
Wilhelm II was going to receive him, and it was from that
time we date the first attempt of the U.S. to avert the
European war.That "Power" was going to become the supreme power not only
of the United States, but, the following year, of the First
World War. Without the secret but persistent intrigues of
this manipulator, there would not have been any Treaty of
Versailles, still less the Second World War, the poisonous
mushroom spawned out of the rottenness of the preceding one.
Colonel House was the key figure of 1914-1918.

In the Europe of those years no one even suspected House's
existence, apart from a few heads of state and, in 1919, a
dozen leaders of the so- called "peace" conference.
Clemenceau in private would call him the "supercivilized
escapee from the wilds of Texas." For the world as a whole,
there was only Wilson.Wilson would be received at Paris in January 1919 as the
most important luminary in the world. The man who was really
the most important, however, and had been since 1913, was
the other one, the shadow, for whom a hotel room sufficed in
Berlin, in London, or in Paris.In 1917 and 1918, in furtive silence, House would bring to
the Allies, those devourers of men, two million fine
American lads, not to mention billions of dollars and
prodigious quantities of raw materials.House gained his mastery over Wilson all the more swiftly
because the latter had always lived phenomenally aloof from
European problems."Mr. Wilson," Colonel House quite crudely explained, "had no
experience with affairs of state." He added: "The attitude
of President Wilson with regard to the European situation
bordered on indifference."That indifference was natural enough. The platform on which
Wilson had made it to the presidency of the United States
would have given one to believe that the world didn't exist
beyond the Potomac."The Democratic platform," House noted, "does not contain a
single word on the subject of foreign relations or problems,
except for one allusion to the Philippines. "That indifference was in truth shared by nearly all of
America.At the beginning of Wilson's presidency," House frankly
related, "there were few citizens of the United States who
could claim any knowledge of European affairs of state or
who had any interest in them." (Intimate Papers of Colonel
House, vol. 1, p. 272)As for diplomats, the incoming President Wilson, who took
office in 1913, was ill-served in a way scarcely possible to
imagine. All the important diplomatic posts of the United
States were distributed after the elections almost by
auction among the electoral supporters of the new president,
whatever their degree of ignorance.

"I am being swamped by office seekers," House moaned. "Job
applicants are driving me crazy! Six hundred employment
requests for a single post. Everybody wants something. All
the eccentrics in the country are at my heels. A hungry pack," he concluded.House had to pass on the candidates for federal judgeships.
Two were too fat. Another had no chin. There was only one left who was
presentable."I still have someone to recommend," House went on to say,
patient as Job, "but he has a big wart behind his ear, and I
shall recommend to him that he take care not to show that
side of his head."

In the appointment of new ambassadors-the proceding ones,
the Republicans, having been swept aside like empty food
cans-the precedure was no different."The people running the party saw nothing in the post of
ambassador but the means of giving an appointment to political figures
whose support it was important to hang onto." (House, I, 210)Wilson had finally sent as ambassador to Berlin a judge who
had got the position from House when he himself recognized that he had
no chance of obtaining it on merit. As for the new American
ambassador to London, he didn't know even the rudiments of the job."That man," House tells us almost jeeringly, "asked Mr.
Bryan (the secretary of state) to be so kind as to reserve a place for
him in the kindergarten so that he might learn the
essentials of his job as quickly as possible. Bryan
laughingly replied: `First I'd have to learn them myself.' "The ambassadorial candidate for kindergarten was named
Gerard. When he had arrived in London, he'd had to resolve
"the infernal questions of dress," and was condemned to wear
knee-breeches to ceremonies at the court. "I find," this
impromptu diplomat wrote, "that it is a laborious task taking a duchess to dinner."The Berlin staff as well had not found it easy to fit in at
the imperial salons. "We Americans," Gerard, the new ambassador, wrote to
House, describing his first trip through Berlin in the
retinue of the court, "had rather a lugubrious air in our
black tails. We must have looked like a burial procession in
those carriages all enclosed in glass." They were called
"the black crows" there.These newly appointed diplomats had all set out aimlessly,
to Berlin as to London, without having received a single line of
instructions from Wilson. "A short time after the
appointment of Mr. Page to the embassy to the court of St.
James," House recounted, "I asked Wilson if he had given the
new ambassador any additional instructions. The president
replied in the negative."As the British prime minister would one day say, "They were
skating on thin ice."

CHAPTER XXX

America Chooses Sides

Wilson lived modestly. When House stayed with him, they
shared the same bathroom. After the evening meal the
president would read the "Adventures in Arcadia" aloud. He
would wind up the clock, let the cats out, and be up at six
thirty the next morning.His White House guests were not overindulged: "There was
nothing to smoke and only water to drink," recalls House."He appeared literally incapable of handling more than one
thought at a time, "I regret to say," wrote House, "he would
sometimes act on very important matters with hardly any
consideration." (House, I, p. 103).Behind this presidential front, House made his own moves
unobtrusively. "He could walk on dead leaves as silently as
a tiger," said Senator Gore.House enjoyed his power behind the throne, and for eight
years he would pull the strings of presidential power.Wilson appeared quite comfortable with the arrangement:"Mr. House is my alter ego. He is myself independent from
me. His thoughts and mine are one."House exercised his power as unelected president in the
affairs of Europe, which at that time were not of the slightest interest to the
public or the politicians.The world would witness the strange spectacle of a United
States president accompanying House to his train in the most
deferential manner. "Colonel" Mandell House was being sent
off to Europe to represent the United States and the president among foreign rulers without
any official mandate.From January 1914 to the end of July 1914 he sent Wilson
numerous letters conveying his interpretation of what ailed
Europe: the conflicts were idiotic and only a non-European
arbiter could bring them to an end.In Europe, House created an exotic impression.German generals tried to talk military strategy with the
"colonel"without much success. House finally explained he was more a
political strategist than a field tactician and went on to
meet the Kaiser.The Kaiser received House warmly at Potsdam:"His English is clear and concise," House wrote Wilson, "He
is too much of a gentleman to monopolize the conversation. He
speaks and he listens. He wants peace because Germany's
interest demands it. He expresses good will and admiration
for England."House revealed his plans for peace:"I told the Kaiser why I undertook my mission and why I was
in Germany in the first place. I wanted to talk with him. An
American would probably be better than a European in solving
problems."House was very proud to announce that the Kaiser had
accepted his "conclusions": "I have succeeded as much as I
could have expected. I am very satisfied with the result."House believed that the only threat to peace was the Kaiser
and that since he had won him over he had in fact solved
every problem. All that remained was a formality: a visit to
Paris and London in order to seal peace in Europe. It would
be in these two cities, however, that House would experience
patent failure.

In Paris the politicians were playing musical chairs as
usual. During the Third Republic Frenchmen were ruled by an
average of 500 ministers per decade. House arrived in the
midst of a frantic shuffle of portfolios. He could find no
one to whom he could talk about his mission. In any event
Paris was totally absorbed in the Madame Caillaux affair,
which had chased all other issues from the headlines for
more than a month. There was no way House could compete with
such an attraction. He left Paris on June 9, 1914
empty-handed.In London he met with similar lack of interest: "London is
completely involved in the social whirl. It is impossible to
do any business now. People only think about Ascot and
garden parties. I am on barren ground," House wrote.For the most part he would meet people who studiously
avoided responsibility. He finally managed to be received by
Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey, whose main interest lay in
fishing and bird calls. He knew 41 different calls, he
informed House. House found him "uninformed about the United
States and its institutions." Everywhere he went, he tried
to sell his peace plan: "I insist on the importance of
adopting a precise policy of international collaboration
aimed at practical goals."

This was exactly what his pompous interlocutors did not
want. House compared the various attitudes: Berlin was
unequivocally positive, in Paris no one wanted to talk to
him, and London was deathly afraid of talking peace, indeed
even of the possibility of talking peace.

At that time the Sarajevo assassination had not yet
occurred. There was no official display of anti-German
posturing, although the British Establishment hated German
trade competitors. Two months later the British government
and press would noisily broadcast that the Kaiser had wanted
the war. In mid-June 1914, however, he was the only one who
took the time to listen and to approve of House's plan. He alone
accepted American mediation to preserve peace in Europe.House was at a loss to explain why the others had proved to
be un cooperative. Grey hinted a reason: "I must take French and
Russian susceptibilities into account." (House, I, 307)Why would peace talks upset the French and the Russians?Sir William Tyrell shared Grey's concern: "I am looking for
a way to approach the Germans without upsetting the Entente's other
members." The admission was revealing. The situation was
growing urgent: by then a whole week had elapsed after the July 3, 1914 Sarajevo
assassination. The British government even refused a verbal
communication with Germany.House tried in vain: "I attempted to get an answer before my
departure, but Sir Edward diplomatically sidestepped the
issue."

With this final brush-off House wrote the Kaiser a
three-page letter on July 9, 1914:My purpose in undertaking this journey was to find out the
possibilities of creating a more cordial relationship among
the great powers. Considering the prominent position Your
Majesty occupies in the world and its well-known desire to
maintain peace, I went immediately to Berlin as Your Majesty
knows.I will never forget Your Majesty's kindly support of the
plan conveyed by my mission as well as the clear exposition
concerning present world conditions kindly offered by Your
Majesty.Your Majesty gave me all the assurances of its benevolent
approval concerning my President's project. I left Germany
happy at the thought that Your Majesty would use its high
influence in favor of peace.In England he had not been able to see the British monarch
from near or far while in Postdam he had been invited to the
emperor's table and had been free to converse with him at length. The British
ministers who had welcomed him were extremely evasive; House was seen as a
untimely nuisance.

***

Wilson was still elated at House's Berlin success and
thought peace was at hand: "Your letter from Paris," the
president wrote, "written as soon as you left Berlin caused
me a profound joy. I believe and I hope you have laid the first foundation for a great achievement."On July 31, 1914 House wrote his last letter to the
president:I have failed to convey to them the urgent necessity for
immediate action. Thus they let things drag on without
giving me the definitive answer which I wanted to send to
the Kaiser.If my project could have been advanced further Germany could
have exerted pressure on Austria and the cause of peace
might have been saved.Forty-five days had gone by in London and House had not
convinced anybody. Professor Charles Seymour of Yale would
write after the war: "If only the British had decided to
consider House's proposals in time we might have reached an
international agreement before the Sarajevo murder.""My government," concluded Page, United States ambassador in
London, "did everything in its power to prevent war."

The governments of France and Britain had demonstrated their
bellicosity by rejecting the American offer. They were set
on war and were not about to be sidetracked into peace. The
Kaiser often said during his post-war Dutch exile: "House's
visit in Berlin during the spring of 1914 almost prevented
the war."The Allies' lust for war was such that even when the Germans
had the advantage they still refused to negotiate,
regardless of the frightful cost in lives. House would later
switch over to the British side but at the time he left no
doubt as who was responsible for the war: "I am often asked
who is responsible for the war," he wrote on April 15, 1915.
"I never commit myself. But here I can say what I think: I
do not believe the Kaiser wanted the war. "

For two more years Wilson would several times sincerely
attempt peace negotiations, while at the same time House
drew closer and closer to the Allies. Wilson's efforts were
cause for marked irritation among the Allies, whose
unswerving goal was to crush Germany. Nothing else was
allowed to intervene.Apart from his desire for peace Wilson's persistent efforts
were also undertaken with an eye on the electorate, which
was almost unanimously neutralist. Until April 1917 the
United States government maintained its course for peace. In
the end, it took all of House and Balfour's mastery of
intrigue to railroad America into the war.

CHAPTER XXXI

Big Business

By the fall of 1914 American big business had a clear
perception that the European war, horrible as it was, could
translate into windfall profits.Wilson's peace efforts had weakened the impact of the charge
of war profiteering, and business felt justified to seize
the opportunity of the century.Within a few years the United States, with only four and a
half million industrial workers at the beginning of 1900,
would become not only the granary of the world but an
industrial giant. The warring nations needed American raw
materials: copper production would increase by half in four
years, zinc production would double, steel would jump from
33 to 45 million tons, coal production would increase by 172
million tons.America's industrial capacity would increase five-fold in
the years after 1914. Shipbuilding would reach three million
tons compared to 200,000 in 1914. Industrial profits would
soar between 20 to 50 per cent.American exports would grow in four years of war as much as
in the preceding 125 years of American history. Wheat and
flour exports would double, meat and steel exports would
quadruple. The economics of the war would make America-based
banks the recipients of half the world's gold.

As a whole banking in the Americas benefited from the
European upheaval. Massive markets in South America, which
until this point had been controlled by British capitalists,
opened to American business. American investment in Latin
America increased 13 times in these few short years, and
American companies came to control more than two thirds of
all fruit, rubber, sugar, oil, nitrate and copper exports.
American businesses would gain 47 per cent of Brazil's
international trade and 50 per cent of Venezuela's during
the war years, and would export twice as much as the British
companies.American-based banks moved into Latin America. Morgan
Guarantee Trust in Argentina, Mercantile in Venezuela and
Peru, National City in Brazil and Uruguay were only the most
important. Yet, although the war had created opportunities for the banks, the great majority
of Americans still regarded it as an incomprehensible
conflict in which the United States should avoid any
involvement.From the outset the Allies had bombarded America with
anti-German atrocity stories. Their impact was limited,
because aside from the neutralist sentiments of the people,
the American news media, much of which was controlled by
influential Jews, was pro-German for its own reasons. Jewish
money and manpower had been heavily invested in the
Bolshevik revolution, and regarded Germany as a vital
component in their bid to overthrow the Russian government
and install a Communist regime. It was not until 1917 that
Germany outlived its usefulness: by then, the tsar had been
overthrown and the Kaiser had proved himself useless in
convincing his Turkish allies to relinquish their
Palestinian province as a home for the Jews.Although the Turks were unwilling to let go of Palestine,
particularly at a time when the fortunes of war were
weighing in their favor, the British Establishment was more
than eager to promise Palestine to the Jews of the world in
exchange for a favor. Lord Balfour transacted the bargain:
as a consideration for Jewish assistance in bringing America
into the war on the British side, the government of Great
Britain would deliver Palestine into Jewish hands once the
war had been won. This British promissary note became known
as the Balfour Declaration.Jewish assistance was indeed invaluable in reversing almost
overnight America's entrenched neutralism. Suddenly Allied
propaganda received full coverage in American newspapers.
From 1917 the public was fed fantastic stories dressed up as
news, such as the "discovery" that the Germans had secret
gun emplacements in the United States ready to bombard New
York and Washington. This alarming "news" had been planted
by the Allies as early as October 1914 and had succeeded in
finding its way into presidential intelligence reports:"We have good reason," said an alarmed Wilson to House, "to
believe that the Germans have built in our own country
concrete platforms for guns as powerful as the ones they are
using in Belgium and France. As far as I am concerned I do
not say aloud what I know of this report. If it got out the
whole country would be stirred to such an extent that I fear
the consequences."Despite his credulity, at the time Wilson wanted peace, but
it was remarkable that he could believe such obviously
absurd information, to the point of ordering an army general
to conduct an inquiry "with the utmost discretion."There was also the "revelation" that the German military
attaché in Washington was going to blow up New York's port
and subway. An official inquiry disproved the rumor.

***

House understood the power of rumor mills and manipulated
news. In the early days he tried to calm Wilson down:
"General Wood's inquiry will demonstrate the inanity of
these rumors. Most misunderstandings are caused by lying
reports or come from sowers of discord."Thus, in the early years of the war, all Allied efforts to
bring the United States into the war failed. The British
ambassador in Washington regretfully reported: "At least
8507o of the Americans want neutrality."Wilson knew that; he also knew it would be political suicide
to oppose neutrality in his 1916 bid for a second term.Neutrality was Wilson's campaign theme. He called for
"strict neutrality, a real spirit of neutrality, a spirit of
impartiality and goodwill towards all interested parties" at
every opportunity.During the election campaign Wilson, indeed, placed the
Germans on the same footing as the British.

Wilson's relationship with Germany was nevertheless an
ambivalent one. He knew almost nothing of German history and
culture and had a deep hatred of German philosphers, or
rather his conception of them. Somewhat in line with
Clemenceau's railing against the Munich beer halls as
temples of German thought, Wilson explained as early as
August 1914, his aversion:"German philosophy is essentially an egotistic concept,
devoid of any spirituality."Where had Wilson gotten such an interpretation so devoid of
knowledge and rationality? As a Calvinist, he regarded Kant,
Hegel and Schopenhauer as threats to his religious
convictions and his concept of politics. In his mind the
German philosophers, not the kaiser, were responsible for
the war. Wilson's irrational hatred was shared by most of
his cabinet, which included a strong contingent of
pro-British sympathizers as well. The secretary of state,
William Jennings Bryan, whose son-in-law was serving as a
British officer, was told by his cabinet colleague, Lane, on
May 5, 1915: "I believe not a single cabinet member has a
drop of Teuton blood in his veins. Two among us were born
British; two of my cousins and three of Mrs. Lane's cousins
are now fighting in the British army."House felt it necessary to caution the members: "We must be
very careful in the way we act because as you know the Americans are very
emotional." (House, I, 351)House's reference to American emotionality epitomized the
attitude of the Washington pro-British elite towards the
people they ruled: the Americans like a potentially hostile
mass, had to be treated cautiously, and manipulated into accepting what was deemed best for them by
their British betters.

Ambassador Page, who represented the United States in
London, found it hard to hide his pro-British fervor, and
became a relentless propagandist for the British
Establishment. House, forgetting how condescendingly he'd
been treated in London (or possibly because of it) became an
eager errand boy for the lofty British lords. Exercising the
caution he had urged on the members of cabinet, he devised a
secret code to communicate with the British ambassador in
Washington. Starting out by being the ambassador's
confidant, he became his accomplice.For the first two years of the war Washington was the scene
of amazing double dealing. Officially the government loudly
proclaimed its neutrality, with Wilson declaring: "This is a
war which does not affect us in any way. Its causes are
totally alien to us." (House, I, 342) While the American
people were lapping up these fine speeches which reflected
their own views, their elected representatives were
sabotaging the very neutrality they had been entrusted to
preserve.

Wilson's aversion to Germans was somewhat mitigated by his
political aspirations. He planned to launch another peace
offensive. After the German victories of August 1914, Wilson
wrote to Zimmermann on September 5, 1914: "Now that the
Kaiser has just demonstrated so well the strength of his
armies, wouldn't he find that if he accepted peace
negotiations today, he would make a gesture which would
confirm the peaceful intentions he has always been proud
of?"The German ambassador in Washington immediately informed
House: "If the Entente is sending a signal, Germany will
show itself reasonable." (House, I, 383)After conversing with the ambassador, House recorded in his
diary on December 27, 1914: "If I could obtain from the
Allies their consent to start negotiations I would find the
Germans very well disposed."

***

The British foreign minister, Sir Edward Grey was less
forthcoming:"All we can promise here, if Germany sincerely and seriously
seeks peace, is that I will agree to consult our friends on
conditions they will deem acceptable."House had been received by Grey in London but he was given a
lecture on English blackbirds as compared to the Texan
variety. Grey had refused to discuss any peace proposals
except to ask House: "The president must not talk about
peace conditions."

House was told in London that the British government would
send one and a half million more troops to the war zone and
"like Wellington at Waterloo, catch the fox by the tail."The French government was also disinclined to talk of peace.
House noted: "They not only want Alsace-Lorraine but much
more. Thus one cannot even envisage peace." (House, I, 447)French bureaucrats and politicians alike were blunt with
House: they did not want to hear anything about peace. House
was perceptive enough to establish the wide difference
between the rulers of France and the great mass of
Frenchmen: "In France," he wrote President Wilson, "the
ruling classes do not want peace but the majority of the
people and the men in the trenches all want peace very
much."Back in Britain, House had come to similar conclusion: "The
war has not rallied the approval of the English people and
if public opinion were to be heard, one would see how really
unpopular the war was." The horrors of war, instead of
sobering governments, would inflame them even more. Greed
was overpowering. The allies Britain had recruited from the
far corners of the earth regarded peace as a blight on their
spoils of war. "South Africa," noted House, "has no
intention of giving up German Africa, which it has seized
... Australia likewise will not give up German Oceania."

Since the Allied spring offensive of 1915 had failed
miserably, the Allies decided to starve the Germans into
submission by a blockade. The employment and conduct of
blockades was strictly regulated by international law.The British had been the prime advocates for the protection
of neutral vessels throughout the seas. The first Hague
Conference had enshrined the "inviolability of private
property during naval warfare" and the second had, at Sir
Edward Grey's urging, "consented to renounce all principles
defining contraband during warfare."At the 1907 Hague Conference the British declared:In order to decrease the difficulties of neutral trading
countries in time of war, His Majesty's government is ready
to forego the principle of wartime contraband with nations
willing to sign a convention to this effect. The right of
inspection will be maintained only for the purpose of
verifying the merchant ships' neutrality." (House, I, 456)The British state secretary Root supported these same
principles, i.e. the guaranteed immunity of the
belligerents' private property on the seas: "Only the
contraband of arms and munitions would be prohibited.
Transport of goods and raw material would be free of all
controls and free of any hindrance."

These declarations represented British interests then. In
1907 the British establishment's lifeline and power depended
on the importation of goods and raw material from the rest
of the world.When their own treaties and declarations no longer suited
them, however, the British government deliberately violated
the 1907 Hague Treaty, as well as all the other
international treaties it had signed. It was like changing
the rules of cricket in the middle of the game.When war broke out the British ignored the provisions of the
treaties they signed: they intercepted neutral vessels,
including American vessels, and imposed a forced sale of
their contents.On September 6, 1914 House informed Wilson:"Britain is preventing access to neutral ports. First it
inspects the ship's contents, and if there is foodstuff a
forced sale is imposed." (House, I, 366)The outrage was so flagrant that even the pro-British
cabinet member Lane was prompted to write on May 5, 1915 to
House:The British are not behaving well. They are detaining our
vessels; they have created a new international code. We have
shown much indulgence and tolerance for the way they have
taken the seas as their private toll-gates. (House, I, 512)House declared the British practice "illegal" and stated on
June 2, 1915: "The British people would never have tolerated
such practices if they had been in our position." (House, I,
520)The American voters were getting irate: How dare the British
stop American exports? House felt the danger and on June 3,
1915 warned Wilson: "The British put everybody in the same
bag regardless of nationality."

On March 9, 1915 the publisher of the San Francisco Daily
Chronicle was the first to demand retribution against
British law-breaking:"Britain was wrong in declaring a blockade against Germany.
If Britain further persists, our government will be totally
justified in putting an embargo on war materiel."Lloyd George panicked at that prospect writing House on June
2, 1915: "The cause of the Allies would be seriously
threatened if the Americans stopped supplying their armies
at this time." (House, I, 518)House tried to convince the British to return to a less
vexing conception of international law. Without consulting
their partners at the Hague, they had disregarded their own
signatures on the treaties and embarked on a piratical
policy against the nations of the entire world. Wilson
wanted some kind of "gentleman's agreement" to end this
flagrant violation of international law. He proposed that
"the nomenclature of contraband goods be limited to war
materiel only and all the rest have total commercial
freedom. Merchant vessels, whether neutral or belligerent,
must travel freely outside territorial waters as long as
they do not carry contraband thus defined."Wilson's proposal to the British was almost identical to the
instructions Sir Edward Grey had given his delegates at the
1907 Hague Conference. House pointed out it should not be
difficult for the British to honor their treaty obligations
since they had the most to benefit: "The threat of submarine
warfare would be removed. According to the principle of
freedom of the seas the country with the most overseas
colonies would benefit the most. Britain would get the
lion's share (of the agreement)." (House, I, 458)For the British Establishment, however, the lion's share was
far from enough: it wanted all and everything. Since Philip
II of Spain and Napoleon of France had confronted the
British monopoly of the seas without success, it was
unlikely that House and Wilson would have much impact on the
rulers of the City, London's financial nerve center.The Germans welcomed Wilson's proposals. German diplomat
Dernberg informed Washington: "If Britain accepts freedom of
the seas, the Germans will immediately evacuate Belgium."
(House, I, 461) Wilson's good intentions were, however,
thwarted within his own cabinet by the pro- British lobby.
The president instructed his ambassador in London "to
present his views with the utmost vigor." To this
presidential order, Ambassador Page replied that he had no
desire to present any such views to the British government.German compromise and American peace moves did not interest
the British government, the chief objective of which at that
time was to draw the United States into the war. The British
wanted to tap America's dollars and America's young men for
their war. Grey rejected Wilson's offer with polite
cynicism: "The United States' entry into the war is of great
benefit to Great Britain, while acceding to your demand
would mean that we would be acting as a neutral." (House, I,
468)

Wilson's efforts were given wide publicity to impress
American voters, who were getting more and more outraged
with British violations, but behind the scenes the British
lobby was inexorably dragging America into the war. House
felt confident in writing: "The President sympathizes from
the bottom of his heart with the cause and aims of the
Allies." (House, I, 520).House was then playing a double game: vocal protestations of
neutrality for the sake of the electorate, while scheming
with the British to destroy America's neutrality. On June 1,
1915 House was able, before leaving

London, to inform the British cabinet confidentially: "It is
my firm intention to insist that the President does not wage
a token war. We must join it with all the strength, the
virility and tenacity of our people in such a way that
Europe will remember our intervention for at least a
century."The date was significant: June 1, 1915. American
participation had already been decided on and it would not
be a token war. House, somewhat carried away by his war
fervor, cabled Wilson: "Our intervention will decrease
rather than increase human losses." The American young men
who would die on the Argonne front in 1918 would sadly
contradict House's absurd statement.

CHAPTER XXXII

The Lusitania Affair

For one year the American people had been led to believe
what their government was saying, never knowing what it was
scheming. As early as February 1915 the British were quite sure they could get
away with anything, so much so they had not hesitated in
using the American flag on their own vessels. One could well
imagine the international outcry if German ships had done
the same thing."Washington," wrote Professor Seymour (House, I, 404),
"advised Great Britain as to the dangers of flying American
flags on her ships without any authorization." This maritime
fraud was, of course, known to the Germans.Strangely, House's humbling experience in England did not
prevent him from returning as a discreet and reliable
British ally. The American electorate had still to be
handled with care. The 1916 elections had to be won because
a defeat could threaten the administration's war plans.

President Wilson organized days of prayers for peace. That
suited everybody, especially those who envisioned spending
the war reaping profits from it. There was, however, a
danger that the banks involved in financing the various
belligerents would be damaged in the conflict. The lending
institutions would be hard put not to take sides when it
came to protecting their investments. A defeated side could
well drag leaders down with it.The Allies' large fleet qualified them as preferred
borrowers. There were large quantities of cotton and
munitions to be sold and shipped. The American public was
sold the notion that such loans would be good for business
and prosperity. Wilson helped the loan program when he
informed the banks: "The government sees no objection in
opening banking credits to all belligerents."In theory it sounded impartial but in reality the Allies
would receive 95 per cent of the loans and Germany 5 per
cent.Professor Pierre Renouvin, a staunch supporter of the
Allies, had to admit: "American economic and financial
relations were almost exclusively tied to Great Britain and France. How could such a situation
not have political consequences? The neutrality of the
United States is no longer impartial."At the beginning this imbalance was not an issue. House
maintained: "We will act not only to save civilization but
also for our own benefit."To the banks, the Allies were attractive clients. They paid
well and on time with money borrowed from the United States
government.

***

The Germans had not reacted violently to this situation.
They were finding alternatives. Cut off from the sea, they
supplied themselves by land. They increased their purchases
from Norway by 80 per cent, from Denmark and Sweden by 200
per cent. They would even buy English tea in Sweden.The British have always had a very flexible conscience when
it came to looking after their own interests: they would
attack neutral vessels carrying goods to Germany and at the
same time sell their surpluses even if they knew the Germans
would eventually use them.Professor Renouvin explained this mercantile practice: "In
order to reduce trade deficits Great Britain thought it wise
to re-export their surpluses even if the enemy would
eventually profit by that. As the Entente's banker, the
British government ranked financial considerations above all
else."Thus the British were fencing to the Germans what they had
piratically rifled from neutral ships, and neutral ships
were sunk with increasing frequency by the British navy.

Reaction against British piracy was offset by the German
sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, off the southern
coast of Ireland. The tragedy was used as a propaganda
bonanza by the British lobby in the United States. The liner
was British, not American, but one hundred and eighteen of
her passengers were United States citizens."We will be at war with Germany within a month," declared
House. Page, the pro-British United States ambassador in
London was elated, and cynically hoped for another such
sinking. On July 21, 1915 he cabled House: "It is strange to
say but I only see one solution to the present situation: a
new outrage like the Lusitania sinking that would force us
into war."On January 11, 1916 House cabled Wilson with similar
cynicism: "England should be grateful for all acts of
terrorism committed by Germany because each person-man,
woman or child-killed on land or sea, is dying for England."

Facts mattered little, everything was used for the
propaganda mills. In 1914 the British story that Germans
were cutting off children's hands had done wonders on the
propaganda front and so had the British version of the
Lusitania sinking. House cabled Wilson again to tell him how
happy he was that the German zeppelins had bombed London and
killed two hundred people. He quoted the remark of British
minister on the matter: "It's a pity they did not shake up
the west of England, where recruitment has been lagging."

***

The Lusitania gave the American press a field day. There was
an explosion of journalistic outrage about the murder of
innocent tourists. The massive press exploitation of these
unfortunate passengers was decisive.It did not drag America into the war within a month as House
had predicted, but it nearly did away with America's
neutrality. The Lusitania victims were combined with the
stories of German gun emplacements in Brooklyn, the cutting
off of Belgian children's hands and other barbarities. The
Germans had now become Teutons and Huns.It took half a century to establish the truth about the
Lusitania. An underwater exploration of the sunken ship
revealed that its hulls were full of ammunition. The British
arms dealers had used tourists to camouflage their war
materiel. They had used twelve hundred lives to hide their
contraband and collect their ill-gotten gains.The Germans were aware of this deception and were well
within the bounds of international law by attacking an
arms-carrying enemy vessel. The Lusitania was a warship
disguised as an ocean liner by the British arms merchants.
They lured twelve hundred innocent people to their deaths
and they alone bear the guilt of this tragedy. As they
unconscionably flew American flags on British ships to cover
up their trafficking, so did they use innocent people.

The truth about the
Lusitania came half a century late. It
was historically important but was of no relevance to the
events of World War I. The case illustrates well that truth
at the time is better than the truth later.The Germans were overwhelmed by the superior British
propaganda machine. The sheer weight of its pervasive
influence could turn lies into facts throughout the world.
Germany was never able to put its side of the story across
for lack of a propaganda network, and was forced to go along
with British fraud. It indemnified families of American
citizens lost in action and undertook not to attack
passenger-carrying vessels "without due warning" and not
before "the lives of non-combatants had been ensured
protection."

Such a declaration made all German submarines vulnerable.
How could submarines inspect armed vessels like the
Lusitania without being shot at as soon as they surfaced?
They would be blown apart in short order. Furthermore, the
Lusitania incident supplied the excuse to place guns on
American merchant vessels.Thus, for a year and a half, the entire German submarine
fleet would be restricted to its bases in Germany while the
Allies plied the seas as they wished.This one-sided imposition on the German government was
deemed intolerable even by members of the Wilson
administration. On October 2, 1915 the secretary of state
told House: "If our merchant ships are armed, they will have
every advantage over enemy submarines expected not to fire
without warning. The British cannot have their cake and eat
it too. It is unfair to force a submarine to warn a ship
likely to use the warning time to sink it."Even the most pro-British member of the Wilson
administration, Ambassador Page, remarked on February 1,
1916:Submarines are a recognized weapon of war as far as the
British are concerned, as they are also using them. It seems
absured to me to expect a submarine to surface and be
responsible for the security of the passengers and crew and
at the same time make itself a target. Merchant vessels not
only shoot submarines on sight but are certainly ordered to
do so.British minister Arthur Balfour confirmed this view: "If the
captain of a merchant ship discovered a submarine across the
bow it is my opinion very likely that he would endeavor to
ram it. I frankly admit that if I were in command of that
ship I would act likewise." (House, II, 240)Meanwhile, House was attempting a last maneuver: on February
18, 1916 he sent to the Allied ambassadors an unofficial
note proposing to disarm all merchant ships. In return they
would no longer be attacked without warning or torpedoed
unless they resisted or attempted to escape.The Allies did not hide their displeasure. How could the
British not be displeased by attempts to thwart their
piracy? British provocation on the seas was one way to bring
the United States into the war sooner or later. For the plan
to succeed it was necessary that German submarines sink as
many American vessels as possible. It was the only way to
turn American public opinion in favor of war. From then on
the top priority British objective was to drive German
submarines to sink American ships.

***

The American public would put up with two or three more
sinkings. After that it was easy for the press to stampede
people. Submarine warfare was the Allies' trump card,
guaranteed to bring America into the war. The Allies had
found the battlefields quite punishing and were looking
forward to the arrival of millions of American soldiers and
billions of American dollars. Any maritime agreement had to
be strenuously opposed. The blockade would force the Germans
into naval warfare involving American vessels, which in turn
would force America to join and win the war for the Allies.Although House went along, others had reservations.
Secretary of State Lansing objected to being made an
unwilling accomplice in a flagrant violation of
international law. On February 3, 1916 he stated: "Since all
merchant ships coming to America have been armed with guns I
believe we are really asking too much of Germany."For the preceding twenty months, Germany had acquiesced to
the point of being virtually at the mercy of the allies on
every sea lane. But the British government needed blood, not
conciliation. Provocations were multiplied. Germany was left
to choose between defeat or self-defense. Either way would
play into British hands. On February 29, 1916 Germany was
forced to declare that from now on "armed merchant vessels
would be considered as auxiliary cruisers and treated as
such."

It was now easy for Wilson to demand with indignation that
Germany guarantee the life of American passengers on British
vessels. He did not suggest how the Germans could possibly
distinguish Americans from other passengers.Most Americans did not realize a war was on. Professor
Seymour wrote: "The onus is on the travel lovers to avoid
using belligerent vessels when their presence on board is
likely to lead to international incidents. By refraining
from crossing the combat zone Americans would no longer
imperil themselves."The Germans had set aside specific combat zones which had
been recognized by the United States: "Congress did not want
a military confrontation with Germany. It adopted the German
definition." (House, II, 244)

This wise decision exasperated Wilson. He opposed Congress
on the issue: "I cannot consent to any restrictions
concerning the rights of American citizens." (House, II,
245)The statement was irrational. Restrictions as to war zones
did protect people from getting killed. Such restrictions
are in effect daily, as in people being detoured from the
paths of an avalanche or the scene of a fire. It was not
necessary for Americans to board armed vessels to go to
Europe. There were many alternatives.Wilson's grandstanding on American rights was obviously
linked with British provocation. House was concerned that
the president had overplayed his hand: "The president and Lansing have, I
believe, put themselves into a mess." All the polls
indicated that 90 per cent of Americans were still opposed
to any military intervention in the European war. Within a
year a handful of provocateurs would use the submarine issue
to bring America to the edge of disaster. Unfortunately, the
American people did not know they were being hoodwinked.

The two thousand pages of notes left by House belatedly
reveal the frantic activities of the pro-war lobby. All the
notes involve the year 1915."My opinion has not changed: the conflict is inevitable."
"We must act decisively." "I think to send more
communications (to Germany) would be a mistake." (House)"Our hopes,our aspirations, our sympathy are closely bound
to those of the democracies." (Page, U.S. Ammbassador in
London)Another 1915 document reports a conversation between Wilson
and Brand-Witlock, an American diplomat based in Brussels:
-Brand-Witlock: "I do not accept our state of neutrality. I
am on the side of the Allies with all my soul and mind."
-Wilson: (loudly) "And so am I."However, Wilson would keep his feelings from being made
public until after the next year's elections. Playing to the
electorate he would, instead, say sanctimoniously: "I have
no right to force the American people to participate in a
war they do not understand." (House, II, 263)

House was back from London. His complicity with British
foreign minister Grey was such that they had devised a
secret code for their correspondence. Scores of letters and
cables would bypass government channels, establishing a
private line of communication between the foreign minister
of a belligerent state and the president's advisor of a
neutral one.One of these secret messages to Grey shows how at odds House
was with real public opinion in the United States: "The
nation continues to show itself clearly opposed to war and I
seriously doubt that Congress would support the president if
he decides otherwise." (July 8, 1915; House, II, 70)Yale Professor Charles Seymour describes what the American
people felt during these months of intrigue:The blockade that the British had tightened at the beginning
of summer had raised a storm of complaints from the American
shippers. They loudly denounced Wilson and the State
department for abjectly accommodating the British while
neglecting American interests. They demanded reprisals
(against the British)." (House, II, 82)

House conceded that the American public was not buying
pro-war arguments: "Our quarrel with Germany does not stir
much emotion in the West of the country or to the south of
Ohio. That's three-fourths of the country." (House, II, 60)
He added: "As for the rest of the country I noticed that it
is the old men and sometimes women who are displaying
bellicosity."United States senators also expressed their will not to
tolerate British maritime blackmail: "The Senate demands
that ever stronger pressure be put on England and its allies
so that they can renounce their restrictions affecting
neutral trade."Yet on August 4, 1915 House was writing to Ambassador Page
and describing "his sadness" that "ninety percent of our
nationals are opposing our going to war." (House, II, 74)

Allied propaganda directed at the American public was often
favorably received, even though the stories were getting
taller. For instance the United States ambassador in Berlin
cabled: "The Kaiser is losing his mind, he spends his time
praying and studying Hebrew." (House, II, 124) A note from
Wilson himself informs us: "Northcliffe assured us last
night that the kaiser is dying of throat cancer."Stories about blood-thirsty Huns resurfaced in the news. On
August 26, 1915 House warned: "German agents will no doubt
try to blow up hydroelectric plants, gas and electricity
stations, subways and bridges in cities like New York."

House urged Wilson to exploit the
Lusitania sinking to the
point at which "the rupture with Germany became inevitable
and the United States would be forced to enter the war on
the side of the Allies." (House, II, 96 ) Secretly, he would
submit to Grey a Machiavellian peace plan to be presented to
the German government. The conditions were to be made
unacceptable to ensure they would be rejected by the kaiser.
The rejection would then enable the United States to join
the Allies in order to save the peace."It goes without saying," House explained to the British
minister, "that I will not let the Germans know we are in
agreement with the Allies, but I will attempt on the
contrary to convince them they (the Allies) will reject our
proposals. This could influence them in accepting them. If
they did not, their refusal would be enough to justify our
intervention." (House, II, 107)The message was as tortuous as the Talmud. Even Wilson
thought the offer was too blatantly in favor of the Allies.
When House conveyed to Grey that if "the Central powers still rejected our
proposals we would be obliged to join the Allies" Wilson
inserted the word "probably" between "would" and "be
obliged." It looked more diplomatic.House shamelessly flattered Wilson to get his way. Whenever
the president acted on House's advice House would write:
"Never indeed has a more noble role fallen to a son of man."
(House, II, 108.) Wilson's susceptability to such outrageous
flattery was no small factor in his decision-making.It is a fact that Wilson hated Germans. Many documents
attest to it. Other people dislike Americans, Arabs, Blacks
or-crime of crimes-Jews. Wilson disliked Germans. That was
no doubt his right, but it also made him particularly
unsuitable to act as a referee.

Despite his aversion to them, Wilson did not mean
deliberately to push the Germans into ruin. He did it
because House, the brain of the operation, maneuvered him
into the European war in 1917. The American diplomat William
Bullitt wrote with some honesty: "House was Wilson's alter
ego and he had decided to drag the American people into a
war under the pretext of a humanitarian gesture, to help the
Allies realize their aims."Wilson's erratic behavior between October 1915 and May 1916
can be attributed to House's deceitful actions. He always
talked peace while actively promoting war.Wilson never saw through House because he was an average
politician with a mediocre vision of the world. He regarded
House's international meddling with admiration because it
was all quite beyond him. House was always careful to make
the president believe he (Wilson) had all the ideas.Sometimes, however, House overplayed his hand. Wilson was
very uneasy with Britain's violations of international law
and attacks on neutral ships and really felt he had the duty
to impose sanctions. It took all of House's flattering
talent to coax the president back on the British path.All this anguished Wilson, because basically he would have
rather had peace; he saw himself as a friend of mankind.
Unfortunately, his mind was vapid, his will was weak. He did
not rush into war, he was pushed into it.A domestic event also increased Wilson's inaction. A
widower, he had suddenly fallen in love with a certain Edith
Bolling Galt. The courtship absorbed him so much that he let
House virtually do all his thinking. Says House himself: "He
was madly in love, with the zeal of a sixty-year old who
suddenly felt old." The president was no longer reading his
correspondence, including Grey's communications.On December 18, 1915 the ailing president married Mrs. Galt.
She would be, from now on, the only interest in Wilson's
life and leave her own mark on the presidency, particularly
after the war. Apart from marital bliss, Wilson was preoccupied with prophecy. He had vague notions
of rallying all the world's people to a higher ethic.The Allies laughed at Wilson behind his back. They listened
to his visions but only for the purpose of emptying America
of its dollars when the time came. Wilson had the key to the
cash box, so they endured his preaching.

House was determined to trap the Germans. He brought
substantial support to the Allies and the ultimatums he
engineered after the sinking of the Lusitania and the Arabic
intimidated the Germans on the seas for months.The Allies greatly benefited, but showed little gratitude.
Grey explained that whatever concessions Wilson extracted
from the Germans, none were of any concern to the Entente.The British government never shared Wilson's quest for
peace. For Lloyd George the war had become an excellent
business and he was in no hurry to settle it. House
described the British prime minister's satisfaction:
"Because of the fact that people will have acquired better
habits and young people will have been subjected to serious
training, one will live longer. Productivity will be
increased because the lazy will be forced to work and keep
on working. The added workforce will add more than a billion
dollars to the wealth of Great Britain. Further, people will
lead a far simpler life and that should save millions of
dollars." (House, II, 147 ) House added that Lloyd George
had concluded his remarks: "War can go on indefinitely."Grey had so little interest in Wilson's peace plan that he
saw fit not to talk about it to his allies. Professor
Seymour remarked that Grey "was so convinced the Allies
would reject the plan that he did not even discuss the
possibility of accepting it. Grey made clear that the Allies
would be suspicious of any conference."On November 25, 1915 House wrote: "The offer I brought with
me and which was to secure the victory of the Allies
deserved, it seems to me, to be more warmly received."
(House, II, 145) The offer was thrown into the trash can.From Boulogne in France, House sent Wilson the last British
offer: "It is understood that if the Allies make any
significant progress during spring or summer, you should not
intervene, but should the war turn to their disadvantage or
become static, then you would come in." (Lloyd George
proposal to Wilson; House, II, 187 ) The British perceived
American intervention as a stop gap in case of defeat, as
did the French.House had promised the Allies he would not breathe a word to
any one about the offer. He warned Wilson it was strictly
private between himself and the allied leaders: "I have
given my word that I would not talk about it to anyone in
America, with the exception of Lansing and yourself." Thus, for the duration of the First World War, the American people
had no inkling of the international shenanigans being acted
out in their name, but against what they desired. Wilson was
well aware of the people's strong neutrality: "I do not
believe that the Americans want to get into the war,
whatever number of our countrymen get torpedoed." (Bullitt,
President Wilson, 282)Three men with the power to make war imposed their secret
diplomacy on one hundred million Americans kept in complete
ignorance.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Wilson Wavers

Colonel House was convinced that "We are the only nation on
earth to get them (the Allies) out of trouble." (House, II,
156) In 1918 it became evident: the Allies were saved from drowning by the
United States, but in 1916 the French government shrugged
its shoulders at the mention of American intervention. Yet
Grey told House, Americans would risk being treated in Great
Britain as "a negligible quantity."The Allies were certain of inflicting a phenomenal defeat on
the kaiser by summer. Ambassador Page concurred with this
expectation and warned Washington "of the necessity of
imposing a crushing defeat without negotiations on the
Germans and for the Allies to dictate any conditions they
wanted." (House, II, 257)While waiting for such a wondrous outcome, House departed
for Germany on January 20, 1916. His report to Wilson is
rather depressing: "I must say before entering Germany
through the Swiss border that everywhere I have gone I found
in the governments the same obstinacy, the same selfishness
and the same hypocrisy." (House, II, 188)Despite his pro-British bias he was rather dejected:
"History will, I fear, severely judge the men who were
selfish enough and had so little foresight to let such a
tragedy happen." The gap between House's words and deeds
left many perplexed. The German chancellor told him: "I do
not understand why my voice remains without echo. I deplore
war and its frightful consequences and I say loudly that my
conscience cannot bear its responsibility." (House, II, 163)House recognized he had been well received in Germany when
he returned to Paris on February 3, 1916. He also realized
that the Germans were losing patience. The withdrawal of
their submarines from combat duty under American pressure
had cut off their supply lines and had exasperated the army
and especially the navy. The blockade had deprived women and
children of food. Millions of them went hungry and some died
of starvation. House callously wrote that: "I find it fair
war for the Entente to try to starve the Germans and reduce
them to sue for peace."The British blockade was causing famine and it was now
likely that the military would change this situation by returning to
submarine warfare in the Atlantic and elsewhere.House was struck by the fighting spirit of the German high
command. On February 14, 1916 in London, House attended a
dinner with Grey, Balfour, Lloyd George and Asquith. He gave
them his impressions: "The Germans are at peak efficiency
and they can strike a decisive blow, break through the lines
and occupy Calais or Paris. If they do, it is possible that
the war will end."At the same time the Allies were also rushing to breach the
German lines. Neither side reached its objectives. They
would slaughter each other by the hundreds of thousands.Lloyd George was unconcerned and stuck to his opinion that
the war "could go on indefinitely." Verdun illustrated this
policy: six hundred and fifty thousand died to gain ground
the size of a football field, and then it was lost again.For two years, across an area four hundred miles wide, a war
of attrition would wear on: a few feet would be won and then
lost. Millions of men would die, powerless, in this
slaughterhouse. Even Churchill, who had been responsible for
the massacre of Gallipoli, would write later: "There is no
more bloody war than a war of attrition. Future generations
will find it incredible and horrible that such practices
could have been imposed by the military." Churchill failed
to mention, however, that Poincaré, Grey and House were not
military men.House now firmly believe that only America could "pull
Europe out of its terrible dead-end." In other words,
America could add another mountain of dead to the other
mountain of dead already blocking the horizon.House was ready to confront the Germans with his
unacceptable plan. He was getting ready to explain, with a
tearful eye, to the American people that he had tried
everything and that war was the last recourse.

The Germans went out of their way to avoid war with the
United States. They were fighting on the Russian front, in
Serbia, in Romania, in Italy, on the Dardanelles, and in
Asia Minor as well as on the entire breadth of the French
front, and they had no wish to deal with another enemy.To keep the peace with the United States the German
submarine fleet remained at its base at Heligoland. German
captains were punished by their government for their
mistakes. Large indemnities were paid even in such debatable
cases as the Lusitania.In March 1916, eight allied vessels were sunk. Each carried
American passengers but none of them lost their lives,
thanks to German caution. Indifferent to German
accommodation, House asked Wilson to break diplomatic relations with Germany and presented the
president with a draft note to this effect.On April 11, 1916 House even cabled the United States
Ambassador in Berlin to warn him about the possibility. On
the same date the Germans once again informed Washington of
their willingness to avoid all incidents at sea.On April 14, 1916 the Reich ambassador in Washington
presented House with an official document-it is noteworthy
that foreign diplomats went directly to House and not
Wilson:

My dear Colonel House: My government is ready to conduct
submarine warfare with all due respect to the rights of
neutrals. It is standing by the assurances already provided
to your government and it had given such precise
instructions to its submarine commanders, that within the
bounds of human foresight errors can no longer be committed.
If, contrary to our intentions, some do occur our government
is committed to correct them by all the means in its power.

The ambassador added that this assurance was given
notwithstanding British violations of international law and
British use of American citizens to cover up their arms
traffic.House convinced Wilson to issue a strongly worded answer to
the conciliatory German offer. On April 18, 1916 House
replied through the president: "Unless the Imperial
government declares immediately that it will forthwith
forsake its current methods of submarine warfare against
passenger ships and freighters, the United States government
has no other alternative than to break diplomatic relations
with the German Empire."House openly bragged he had forced the president's hand: "I
called on my best means of persuasion to keep him in a state
of mind impervious to any compromise."Would House succeed in breaking relations? The Germans would
not oblige him. They announced that submarine commanders had
been sent new instructions and they would be "ready to do
their utmost in keeping military operations, during the
entire war, strictly within combat areas." The concessions
were humiliating for Germany but the United States
government was also asked to exercise its neutrality and be
watchful that "all belligerent powers adhere to principles
of humanity." If the United States government declined
"Germany would then face a new situation and would be
absolutely free to act accordingly." (House, II, 271)The American people were kept in the dark about the whole
affair and no newspapers ever mentioned any of the real
concessions made by Germany. Wilson was perplexed and asked
House what he thought of the German answer. House admitted
that since Germany had accepted the American conditions
"there was no valid excuse to break diplomatic relations
with Berlin." (House, II, 272)House used the word excuse rather than motive or reason.

On March 10, 1916 House, using the code the British
government had devised for his exclusive use, cabled Sir
Edward Grey: "If you deem it useful I will renew our offers
by cable every two weeks. Let me know, if you please,
whether I should act this way or on the contrary wait until
you signal me. Be assured, my dear friend, that I think of
you all the time and that I would like somehow to lighten
the burden weighing so heavily on your shoulders."Thus Grey was kept informed by House about everything. On
May 27, 1916 Grey was told on the same day the terms of a
new German offer. The document is of great importance: "Dear
Sir Edward, I want to attract your attention to one thing:
the German chancellor declares that Germany would accept a
peace based on the borders of states as they exist today on
the maps." (House, II, 321)It was the end of May and Germany was victorious on both the
Western and Eastern fronts. Yet it was willing to give up
the gains its army had won to that point.The Allies would not hear of it. Jesserand, the French
ambassador in Washington, reacted immediately: "France will
not accept under any circumstances listening to plans which
include the word peace." (House, II, 322)Grey wrote to House endorsing this fanatical reaction: "No
Englishmen will tell France at this stage: Don't you think
it's time to make peace?"The Allies interpreted Germany's desire for peace as a sign
of weakness and were all the more determined to press on
with a war of attrition. Their greatest fear at this stage
was Germany's acceptance of the American peace plan. At the
time any American input was seen as interference.House was aware of the Euorpean view when he wrote:
"American patricipation (in the conflict) could become
embarrassing for the Allies if it touched on the secret
treaties which Wilson knows nothing about." (House, II, 323)The British wanted American dollars and American soldiers
but rejected Wilson's sermonizing about land grabs and
colonialism.Wilson, as obtuse as he was, had finally awakened to the
schemes of the allies. "He suspected," wrote Seymour,
"certain Allies of pursuing selfish plans and he was not as
convinced as his friend House of the necessity of taking
sides with them." His reservations were such that at the end
of 1916 American policy could appear to have turned against
the Allies.

CHAPTER XXXIV"He Kept Us Out of War."

The withdrawal of German submarines proved
counter-productive for the Allies. The fewer ships that were
sunk the less America was likely to weigh in for the British. American ships had to be sunk and
American indignation had to be raised. For this purpose the
British needed the German submarines back in action.House was designated for this mission of provocation. On
November 17, 1916, a few days after the elections, he would
write: "If we have to go to war let it be against Germany."Yet a number of events were still to thwart the British
lobby in America. The mail scandal particularly angered
Wilson. The British had gotten into the habit of seizing
American mail on United States ships they searched. British
inspectors had control of all American correspondence for
whatever purpose they chose. House quotes Wilson: "The way
this thing is going I think solid retaliation is the only
way to deter them." (House, II, 354)The China incident was the last straw. The British boarded
the U.S. ship China by force, seized the mail and began to
interrogate the American passengers, who were then taken off
the ship as prisoners. It was piracy at its worst. House was
embarrassed and had to write to his British friends: "I
cannot conceive that the British could have taken fifty
people off the American vessel China."Sir Edward Grey harshly dismissed House's lament.House wrote: "Sir Edward could hardly invent anything that
would more surely cool the ardently pro-British sentiments
of Americans such as myself." (House, II, 341)Seymour wrote: "Mr. Wilson was extremely troubled by the
Allies' attitude, particularly when Germany, which had
submitted to the president on the submarine dispute, was not
giving him any problems at the moment."House did not hide his apprehension: "It is starting to get
on the President's nerves. From now on his suspicions of
Allied motivations will only deepen." (House, II, 339)The British practice of blacklisting also angered American
opinion. "On July 18, 1916 the Government of the United
Kingdom published a list of more than eighty American corporations with which it was
forbidden to trade because they had commercial relations
with an enemy of the Allies. The number of blacklisted
companies has now risen to fifteen hundred." (House, II, 348)Thus, fifteen hundred American companies were cut off from
credit, supplies, and trade. One wonders what would have happened if
Germany had committed the tenth of such an action!Professor Seymour explains the boycott: "British shipping
companies were advised not to accept freight from the proscribed
firms. Companies of neutral countries were given to
understand that if they took freight from the blacklisted
American firms they too would run the risk of seeing their
freight rejected in British ports. Bankers of such countries
would no longer finance blacklisted traders."On July 22, 1916 adviser Polk wrote to House: "The blacklist
just published by the British government is creating considerable
irritation; something will have to be done."The next day Wilson lost patience and House was asked to
recall Ambassador Page from London.House was grasping for excuses: "They are perhaps imprudent
in their methods, blinded by their interests or their immediate
needs"; adding, "The Allied attitude results for the most
part in that they do not realize they have a kind of
instinctive feeling for considering the high seas as
inalienable British property."

Thus the British-American conflict worsened from week to
week. American public opinion demanded countermeasures.
Congress had also lost patience: In September 1916 President
Wilson was given special powers authorizing him "to take, if necessary, violent means of
reprisal."British Ambassador Cecil haughtily replied: "If you attempt
to put these measures into effect, it would result no doubt in the
breaking of diplomatic relations and the end of all trade
between the two countries." (House, II, 357)The State Department reported: "Our relations with Great
Britain are worsening," while Wilson complained privately that "the
Allies are exasperating beyond description."People wondered whether the threat of an American
intervention would be diverted from Germany and against the United Kingdom.

By the end of 1916 this threat became quite real. The United
States government was prompted to act. A decision was taken
that would change the British role forever. The United States would no longer
tolerate British rule over the seas of the world, British
dictatorship over neutral countries, British seizure of
mail, kidnapping of American passengers and blacklisting of
American companies. The United States took the historic step
of building one hundred and thirty-seven new ships. Shortly,
the British navy was facing an American fleet of equal
might, which would soon grow mightier.Britannia's pretension to rule the waves had decreed that
Germany would be prohibited from expanding its maritime
trade. Britain had started a war to prevent such a
possibility. The British claim of dominion over the seas was
now being challenged and swept away by Britain's keenest
trading partner. The British monopoly might be broken at
last. Other countries, including Japan, would eventually
outstrip the British.Wilson was as determined as Congress: "Let us build a
stronger navy than theirs and let us act as we see fit."
(House, II, 353)The British had practiced too much perfidy and hypocrisy for
their own good; they had shot themselves in the foot. In
1916 Congress struck a fatal blow at arrogant British
imperialism.

***

American public opinion against the British was also
reinforced by the testimony of millions of Irish-Americans
who had fled the ruthless colonization of their native land
by Britain. Their forebearers had been slaughtered and
persecuted for centuries by the British and more recently
they had vividly felt the bloody massacre of Irish patriots
during Easter, 1916. The British had put down the quest of
Irish independence with more savagery than it had massacred
Zulus in Africa. The inhuman treatment traditionally
reserved for Irish prisoners in British jails triggered
widespread indignation in the United States: "American
sympathy went without question to the Irish prisoners, who
were very harshly treated. This was objectively reflected in
a Senate resolution." (House, II, 353)Sir Edward Grey sent House on August 28, 1916 a stern
reprimand: "The attitude of the Senate, voting for a motion
in favor of Irish soldiers without worrying about atrocities
committed in Belgium, caused us a painful impression."House abjectly disowned the United States' motion and even
apologized to the British: "... it surpasses the record of
blind acts committed by my unfortunate country."The British reference to Belgium particularly angered
Americans. State Secretary Lansing replied at once: "... the
hypocritical language of the British as far as Belgium is
concerned fills us with indignation." (House, II, 355.) Even
the pro-British Page conceded: ". . . the British would have
fought alongside the French even if the French government
had violated Belgium's neutrality to reach German soil more efficiently."The question now was whether the United States would cut off
aid to the Allies.

1916 was a very bad year for the Allies. The British were
losing everywhere. Even the vaunted Royal Navy lost a major
sea battle off Jutland, on May 31, 1916, despite the fact it
outnumbered the German force two to one. Their losses were
double those of Germany, despite the fact that a British spy
ring had informed their admiralty of German Admiral von
Scheer's plans for breaking the blockade.Von Scheer had no wish to fight it out with the bulk of the
Royal Navy and had planned to lure a number of British
cruisers close to Norwegian coast. Since his plans had
become known, he had to face the entire Royal Navy. The
clash was hard fought and Germany lost six ships and 2551
sailors; the British lost twelve ships and 6094 sailors.
British pride was hurt by facing a better naval force, with
better crews, better commanders and more accurate firepower.The British, galled by their defeat, switched their
attention to the propaganda front with rancorous vengeance.
The British claimed that a German submarine, the U-53, had
torpedoed six Allied vessels near the American coastline. An
official inquiry confirmed the U-53 had sunk six vessels,
but "well outside United States territorial waters."
Professor Seymour also agreed: "The U-53 actions were
strictly within the norms of maritime war usage."The British hardly conformed to this usage. German
ambassador Bernstorff pointed out that British submarines
sank German freighters without warning and without regard
for human lives every day of the week.Once more an anti-German campaign in the United States had
failed miserably.

Despite famine and provocation the Germans stuck to their
policy of not giving House an excuse to push America into
the war. The price was heavy. The blockade was starving
civilians while the British were shipping millions of tons
of arms without fear of German attack. Kaiser Wilhelm had
ordered the policy because he believed his moderation would
lead to peace.The German policy of moderation lasted throughout 1916,
British propaganda notwithstanding, as indicated by State
Department reports: "German submarine warfare was conducted
according to maritime law." This report appears in the House
private papers.The Kaiser's policy, however, was being increasingly
criticized in Germany. The principal argument put forward against the
chancellor was that he gave in to the United States although
he knew very well the American government did not act as a
neutral: it put pressure only on Germany while allowing
Britain to break international law Germany ambassador Bernstorff officially warned President
Wilson as early as October 18, 1916 that Germany could no
longer sacrifice its national interest: "The German
government foresees the time when it will be forced to take
back its freedom of action." (House, II, 374)Wilson was full of misgivings: "If we send Bernstorff back
and go to war, we will be covered with flowers for a few
weeks; then calls will be made on our money. The money we
give will not last long and then there will be demands for
an unlimited number of soldiers. Admitting that we subscribe
to all their (the Allies) demands."Wilson's comments were quite prophetic. A few months later
he would see his worst fears realized.House was very concerned over Wilson's frame of mind at the
time. Congress demanded sanctions against the British
government. House could clearly see the day where both
Wilson and Congress would decide to stop the flow of goods
and money to the Allies.As the November election grew near, House was faced with a
90 percent non-interventionist electorate. Even when his
infatuation with British pomp and his allegiance to the
British Establishment impelled him to promote war, he was
forced by political realities to appear pro-American.Likewise, Wilson had to set aside his secret hatred of the
Germans, as well as House's machinations, if he wanted to
win the election. He presented himself as the peace
candidate who would defend American neutrality at any cost.
Yet his peace promises did not sway the electorate which
wanted more tangible proof.It became a matter of hiding any pro-Allied leanings and
convincing the voters that the administration was more than
100 percent for peace and neutrality.

Wilson never tired of referring to the Allies' war as a
complex mystery: "The origin of this peculiar war or its
objectives have never been revealed .. . history will have
to search a long time to explain this conflict." (Bullitt,
President Wilson, 280)Such statements made it difficult for the American voters to
imagine that their author would throw them into a foreign
war-one he himself admitted he could not understand.In July 1916 Wilson received the Democratic nomination for
president. His campaign slogan was built around the theme:
"He had kept us out of war, he has maintained our
neutrality."

As Bullitt pointed out, however, "Wilson, knowing he had
been trying for the last eight months to drag Americans into
the war, had such a bad conscience about it that he avoided
during all his campaign speeches any mention of having
maintained neutrality in the past." This notion was left to
others, such as Governor Glynn of New York, to propagate.Thousands of posters and leaflets were distributed in every
American town, particularly in the West, where anti-war
sentiment ran stronger. "He has maintained America's
neutrality" became the Democratic party slogan. The massive
propaganda blitz made Wilson synonymous with peace and
neutrality. Bullitt added: "If the American people had known
he was trying to get them into war he would have experienced
a crushing defeat."

Wilson remained aloof throughout the campaign. "The
President has left everything in our hands. He has not
phoned, made the slightest suggestion or given any advice,"
said House.House was thus empowered to run a pro-neutralist campaign as
he saw fit. He was determined to sabotage this policy as
soon as the elections were over. He would find a way to
drive the Germans into some act of desperation, which he
hoped would reverse neutrality. House had by then become a
master of ruse and subterfuge and felt quite confident his
talents could be used to influence events: "One can always
rely on the Germans to commit some psychological mistakes at
the critical moment."For House the campaign was just another necessary duplicity.
The American people were being duped on a massive scale.
House in his role as standard bearer of neutrality would say
or promise anything to secure Wilson's re-election, which in
fact would guarantee his own tenure in the seat of power.
With another term up his sleeve, everything would be
possible for House.

Thus, on November 7, 1916 Wilson was re-elected president of
the United States. But the results showed that House had not
fooled all the people. Wilson was elected by a small margin.
For a while it looked as if he had lost. The New York Times
even announced his Republican opponent the victor.Later, a victory celebration was organized for Wilson, but
it was more like a funeral. House declined to attend because
he did not want to be associated with defeat. "Lansing and
McCormick went and they told me they had never been to such
a mournful event." (House, II, 282)Finally, after four days of hope and despair, Wilson emerged
as the winner by a head."He owed his election to the ambiguous votes of the Western
States, all in crushing majority against the war" (House, II, 282).
Wilson's inaugural speech still reflected his campaign
promises: "I formally declare that the time has come for the
United States to play an active role in establishing peace
in the world and ensuring its continuance. I solemnly
undertake to keep my country out of war." (House, II, 422,
428)Wilson appeared to be genuinely impressed by the strength of
anti- interventionist sentiment in America. Back in the
White House he clearly, for a few weeks at least, respected
the popular will. When House tried to broach the subject of
America's participation in the war for the first time,
Wilson stood up to his alter ego.Sigmund Freud and Bullitt called it Wilson's last stand:
When on January 4, 1917 House pressured him to prepare for
war, Wilson replied:There will be no war; the country has no intention
whatsoever to let itself be dragged into this conflict. We
are the only neutrals among the great peoples of the white
race and to cease being neutral would be a crime against
civilization. (House, II, 288)Four months later House and the Allies would be swamping
Wilson and the "crime against civilization" would start to
take shape.

CHAPTER XXXV

A Home for the Jews

Rarely had voters indicated so clearly to an elected
official why they had given him their votes. The neutrality
issue crossed party lines. The Republican platform had
demanded that Wilson guarantee neutrality.After several months of standing firm, Wilson was gradually
being softened up by the relentless House. House regarded
neutrality as a strategem to enter war and Wilson was a
horse to be ridden into battle. "The President," said House
with some arrogance, "can modify his views. As I have said
before, he often and easily changes his mind."The contrast between Wilson and House over neutrality was
uneven. Wilson was rather honest but his mind was like a wet
sponge, easily manipulated. House, the honorary Texas
colonel, was power hungry and deceitful. He knew the
American people would never have elected him and he made it
his business to pull all the strings behind the scenes,
behind Wilson. Wilson tried to respect his election
commitment but House never let up. The tug of war would go
on for months, like the plot of some detective novel.

***

Wilson was disappointed with the Allies: they did not want
peace, they had imperialist designs, they did not share his
vision for a better world. He had reached the conclusion
that neither the Germans, whom he did not like, nor the
Allies, whom he distrusted, were worth a war. America would
not join the massacre for their sake.House, on the other hand, was committed to British interests
and was committed to deliver America to fight a British war.Wilson and House were no longer of one mind or one another's
alter ego. In fact, House set out to undermine Wilson's
moves for peace: "I did all I could to stop Wilson from
launching another peace offensive without first having
received the Allies' consent." (Letter to Seymour). House
later commented that Wilson's peace proposals were
"offending the Allies." (House, II, 431)Rebuffed by the Allies, Wilson now wanted to reach European
public opinion directly and create popular peace movements among
all the belligerents. House immediately told Wilson: "The
Allies would interpret such a project as inimical." Wilson
did not want to appear hostile, so he dropped his plan.
Instead, he asked House to go to Europe once more. House
said no: "It would take too much time and I would have to
struggle with all sorts of unfavorable arguments. None of
them could ignore that I was there to talk peace and I would
rather go to the kingdom of hell than visit these countries
with such a mission." (House, II, 433) Wilson was somewhat
taken aback. His alter ego preferred hell to peace.When Wilson stated that the matter of submarine warfare and
its attendant international laws should be settled without
any further delay House replied he could see no reason "to
pull the chestnuts out of the fire for Germany."Wilson decided to send a message to all the countries at war
as well as the American people. He wrote it himself and
showed it to House who immediately was critical of its
content: "I dread the reaction it will provoke. The phrase
`the causes and objectives of this war are obscure' raises
strong objections." In his secret notes House complained:
"Each time he (Wilson) talks about the war he offends the
Allies." (House, II, 436)The "offending" phrase was nevertheless correct. The war had
been prepared in secrecy, with lies and provocations. Its
aims and objectives had been carefully obscured by the
schemers who had set it in motion. Perhaps without realizing
it, Wilson was directing the spotlight on a crime.House could not countenance such a suggestion and put on a
performance for a change of phraseology: "I begged him
(Wilson) to modify the text I criticized and to replace it
with something which would allow the Allies to believe the
president sympathized with them." (House, II, 437) House
wanted the president to perform a kind of dialectical
somersault: his quest for peace had somehow to convey to the
Allies that he really did not want it. "I suggested the
insertion of a clause specifying he did not have the
pretension to interfere or demand peace."Jusserand, the French Ambassador in Washington, also spoke
for the British when he stated: "The Western front is in all
likelihood condemned to stagnate for at least a year and
perhaps more."It was a war of attrition which the British were in no hurry
to stop, while the thousand-year-old fabric of European
civilization was being torn apart.

The outcome of the differences between House and Wilson
would be profoundly affected by the intervention of certain
Jewish personalities, as well as by Lloyd George, an ardent
war advocate.Lloyd George's first announcement was of "a policy based on
the knock-out principle, which would exclude any possibility
of negotiations with Germany" (House, II, 440). This was the same Lloyd George
who less than twenty years later would go to Berchtesgaden
to salute with warmth and admiration the new chancellor of
Germany, Adolf Hitler.Sir Edward Grey was also replaced by the Jewish peer, Lord
Balfour, while another Jew, Sonnino, had been made foreign
minister of Italy. In the United States, Jewish financier
Bernard Baruch had enlarged his influence within the
administration. French premier Georges Clemenceau's
equivalent of House was the Jew Georges Mandel, known
legally as Jeroboam Rothschild, and his financial adviser
was another Jew called Klotz, who was appointed finance
minister of France. (Years later Klotz would end up in jail
as a convicted swindler.) House was delighted with all the
changes.Balfour would make it his personal business to change
American public opinion. In 1916 he came to the United
States to lay the groundwork among financial and press
circles. In 1917 he made his famous Balfour Declaration,
which was to bring about one of the greatest revolutions in
the world.The Declaration appeared quite innocuous: it granted to the
Jews of the world a "home" in Palestine. The Jews would not
interfere with the existing inhabitiants of Palestine, the
Palestinians. The Palestinian way of life and property would
be respected and there was not the slightest hint of
expanding the "home for the Jews" at the expense of the
Palestinians.Balfour's plan raised concern in many countries: it created
a precedent for other peoples to claim a home in a land they
may have inhabited as far back as two thousand years ago.
The precedent would open the door for many to claim land
they had lived in far more recently. Balfour was quick to
put the lid on the whole issue with the help of
Jewish-controlled newspapers and international news
agencies. He reasoned that issues are raised by the press,
not people, and if the press did not debate his plan no one
would question it. Those who did were never reported.
Balfour believed in the sacred duty of the press to
manipulate the many for the benefit of the few. He chose
America to implement this policy.

At the beginning of the war the majority of Jews had been
favorable to Germany. Tsarist Russia, their mortal enemy,
had been attacked by Germany, and the Kaiser was looked upon
as the man who would deliver Palestine as a home for the
Jews. Although there had been occasional violent reactions
against them, it was in Germany they felt most at ease. They
had acquired enormous influence in finance and business, in
the news media and the universities. They regarded their own
language of Yiddish as akin to German and they liked to be
involved in German culture. Kaiser Wilhelm treated them with
deference. The richest man in Germany was a Jew named Albert Ballin, who was an adviser to the Kaiser;
the most influential members of the Reichstag were Jews.British Jews thought highly of the Kaiser: Lord Rothschild
sent a cable wishing the Kaiser well when the war broke out.American Jews were just as favorable to Germany, as the war
coverage of the Jewish-controlled press in 1914 and 1915
will testify. When Balfour came to the United States in
1916, he was amazed at the strength of the Jewish lobby and
Jewish influence in finance, politics and the press. Balfour
was satisfied the Jews could direct the country in any way
they pleased. It was his task to harness and direct this
tremendous power for the benefit of his British associates.Certain events had made a reorientation of Jewish loyalties
necessary. By 1917, Tsarist Russia had been destroyed and it
looked as if the Kaiser's Turkish allies would prevent him
from delivering Palestine to the Jews. As far as Balfour was
concerned Germany had outlived its usefulness and any Jewish
loyalty to it was totally out of date. The British were now
to hand over Palestine after Balfour and House helped them
win the war by bringing America to their side. It was a
simple deal: the Jews would bring America into the war, thus
ensuring a British victory. For this service Great Britain
would make Palestine "a home for the Jews."Balfour had yet to convince American Jewry. He had to make
them change sides almost overnight. The most eloquent and
persuasive advocates of Zionism were enlisted to tell
American Jews that their dream of a return to Jerusalem was
about to be realized after two thousand long years. It was
an emotional appeal designed to bring American Jewry to the
side of the Entente.Balfour and his agents were successful beyond all
expectation. American Jewry switched over to the side of the
Allies in 1917. Jewish financial and press networks were now
placed at the disposal of the Allied war effort.After the war, Balfour explained his promises were only in
his mind: just so many propaganda slogans to promote
whatever he was trying to do at the time. The Jews he had
convinced did not see them that way. The Balfour Declaration
was a time bomb bringing war and destruction throughout the
course of the twentieth century.

***

The British government was informed by House of the Wilson
administration's every move. House, backed by the full power
of American Jewry, was in virtual control of America. In
turn the British were in control of House. He took his
orders from London and acted as a kind of unofficial British
viceroy of the United States.The new order left Wilson weaker and more isolated than
ever. He had become withdrawn and no longer made any attempt
to confer with House on the subject of peace. In the eyes of the new power
brokers President Wilson was just a figurehead and was
treated as such.This development greatly concerned the Germans. On December
12, 1916 the German government declared itself ready to talk
peace with all of its adversaries. The Germans were hoping
Wilson, now that he was taken at his word, could somehow
influence the Allies to sit down at the peace table. They
soon found out the president was in no position to wield
such influence.The British Establishment had sent a high level agent, Sir
William Wiseman, to Washington. His job was to instruct
House of London's requirements. The German peace call got
short shrift. Wiseman informed House: "It is impossible to
negotiate with the Germans since they did not specify any
conditions."The British answer was quite dishonest since "conditions"
are discussed at the negotiating table, not before. Again,
the president was left out by the British, who communicated
with House as the unofficial head of state of America. -In
London, U.S. Ambassador Page immediately informed the
British government that Wilson was not in the least
interested in the German peace call.It was an outright lie which Seymour deplored: "Mr. Page has
so little sympathy with Mr. Wilson's policy that he gave the
British to understand the American administration would not
take the German appeal seriously." (House, II, 445)In fact, Wilson wrote a note all by himself and for the
first time in his life did not show it to House. He appealed
to both the Allies and Germany to exchange views: "The
belligerents each insist on certain conditions. They are not
incompatible, contrary to the fear of certain persons. An
exchange of views would clear the air." This was exactly
what the Germans wanted and the Allies rejected.When House read the note after it had been sent, he moaned:
"These words will enrage the Allies." He formally
disassociated himself with the entire content of Wilson's
note because "the Allies were obviously not in a mood to
welcome it." The statement indicated that House was more
concerned with the Allies' mood than the interests of
America.The Germans answered Wilson at once: "A direct exchange of
views was the best way to reach peace. Germany renews its
call for a conference." (House, II, 449)The Allies would come to a conference only if the Germans
were defeated and chained: this was the gist of their reply
to Wilson.

Both Wilson and Germany had failed in all their peace
initiatives. There was no longer any reason for the Germans
to restrain their submarines. The people were about to revolt. They could no longer endure the
famine and demanded the breaking of the British blockade.
Already more than one hundred thousand workers had gone on
strike in Berlin, closing down strategic factories. One
third of German deputies were socialists opposed to the
military. As in St. Petersburg, they called on the people to
revolt. Germany was faced with choosing between famine and
revolution on one hand, or hurting the feelings of American
officials on the other.Wilson's secretary of state, Lansing, was aware of Germany's
dilemma when he concluded on December 21, 1916: "We are on
the eve of war."House and the British lobby were concerned that Wilson might
still thwart their war plans. House sounded the alarm in a
number of notes: "X is very concerned ... he believes Wilson
wants peace at any price" (January 2, 1917). "Y is quite
downcast. According to him the president has lost his nerve"
(January 4, 1917).House's fears were realized on January 22, 1917, when Wilson
addressed the Senate: "We must reach a peace without
victory. Peace must be based on the right of each nation to
decide its own destiny without the intervention of a more
powerful external enemy."The speech reflected American public opinion but profoundly
upset Britain. Herbert Hoover, although he was anti-German,
backed the president: "Wilson expressed what many people
thought and waited for someone with the courage to
proclaim." The future American president then asked Wilson:
"The next step is to ask all belligerents whether they
accept the principles expressed in your speech. If they
don't, what are their objections? If they agree it will be
fitting for you to convoke them in a conference."Wiseman, Balfour's liaison man with House in Washington,
conveyed the British reaction: "By insisting too much on
peace among the Allies you [the Americans] are doing great
harm to the cause of democracy" (House, II, 465). "Deep
resentment against Wilson," wrote House. "The Allied press
keeps refering to his unfortunate mention of `peace without
victory.' Everybody sees a contradiction on our part in
wanting Germany to escape punishment."House never stopped agitating for war. On January 25, 1917
he urged Wilson: "If I were you I would be cautious enough
to hasten the state of readiness of the navy and the army."On January 30, after the Allied failure to answer Wilson's
last peace call, the German ambassador announced that
Germany had now decided to break the British blockade
regardless of American reaction.The German forces were in good position on both East and
Western fronts. Russia, attacked from within and without,
was about to collapse. This meant a million German soldiers
could be brought back to the Western front. Further, the
defeated Russia would supply Germany with all the wheat and
meat it wanted, which in those days Russia had in abundance.

The German government hoped to offset the impact of the
British blockade and perhaps ward off an American
intervention. Unfortunately for Germany, tsarist Russia
would stagger on for another two months. Manifests of German
ships were published in order to warn American travelers of
potential dangers, in still another attempt to avoid
American involvement.The British did not reciprocate but instead increased their
acts of piracy. Wilson was appalled: "I feel as if the
planet is suddenly rotating the other way, after going from
East to West it is now going from West to East. I have lost
my balance."

The Kaiser left the door open for a reversal of the
submarine decision if the president "succeeded in laying
acceptable grounds for peace." He also promised to
"safeguard American interests to the best of his ability."
Wilson countered by reaffirming: "We do not wish to help
selfish aims," which seemed more directed against the Allies
than Germany.House kept a close watch on Wilson: "He [the president]
moved his books around the desk nervously, he walked up and
down the room ... We were painfully killing time, there was
nothing left to say. Finally the president suggested we play
billiards."House and the British lobby intensified their pressure on
Wilson to break for diplomatic relations with Germany. After
agonizing for three days, Wilson finally yielded and agreed
to inform Congress that relations were now broken with the
Reich. Even then Wilson still clung to rays of hope: "The
president still refused to admit that a diplomatic break
automatically means war." For House and his associates it
most definitely meant war: "The break in diplomatic
relations will lead to war ipso facto:' (House, II, 484)Wilson was very ill at ease. He feared public reaction.
Industrialist Henry Ford had told him: "I have not met,
between New York and San Francisco, a single man who wanted
war."Although the German ambassador was officially expelled,
Wilson allowed him to stay another two weeks. He was still
in Washington when the Swiss ambassador, representing German
interests, entered negotiations to "re-establish relations
between Washington and Berlin." House was alarmed: "High
officials at State fear Wilson might weaken."The return of German submarines, however, staved off House's
anxiety. It was the only thing that would change American
opinion.

If the Germans were to succeed they had to hit hard and win
the sea war quickly within six months. They had worked out
that their hundred and fifty submarines would sink three million tons of shipping
during that period, one third of the British merchant navy.
This would also frighten neutral countries away from
exporting goods to Britain.Exports of wool from Australia, cotton from America and
wheat from Canada and Argentina would be stopped. American
intervention would come too late to save London. The
submarines resumed combat duty on February 1, 1917. By the
end of the month five hundred and forty thousand tons of
British vessels had been sunk. By April the figure would
reach eight hundred and seventy-four thousand tons.The French historian Renouvin wrote:

It is estimated that a steamship on the Gibraltar-London
route would have one chance in four of not making it home.
Great Britain is therefore in the process of losing at an
alarming rate its best merchant ships, those bringing wheat
from Canada and Australia, raw material from the United
States and meat from South America.

The German plan had succeeded beyond expectations. Britain
was losing on land and sea. The British Admiralty brass was
running scared: "If the losses incurred during the second
week of April continue at the same level in the following
weeks, it will be impossible to ensure the supplies of the
British isles. Britain might be forced to capitulate."
(Renouvin, La Crise européenne, 441)General Robertson, Chief of the British General Staff,
informed Field Marshal Haig on April 26, 1917: "The maritime
situation has never been worse than now. Jellicoe
[commanding officer of the British navy] says almost daily
things are desperate."

The tsar of Russia was overthrown on March 15, 1917. The
British were massacred in the battle of Artois on April 6
and the French experienced a similar fate in Champagne on
April 16. The Allies were reeling. "Admiral Holtzendorff's
promise in January to bring Great Britain to heel before the
end of August is about to be realized." (Renouvin, La Crise
européenne, 411)The German navy gave the British a taste of their own
medicine. They did not like it, and like the proverbial
bully cried foul. The American press was now all ears to
British wailing and waxed emotional over British-American
kinship. The pro-British interventionists got a tremendous
boost when big business weighed in on their side. American
exports to Britain came to a grinding halt. The arms
merchants, the cotton and wheat traders could no longer
transport their wares. They were hit in the pocketbook.
Overnight Germany became the enemy, regardless of the rights
and wrongs of the conflict.Professor Renouvin states: "Britain and its allies accounted
for three quarters of American exports. Within days American ports
were piled with goods which ships were no longer loading.
The resulting losses were not only hurting the arms
manufacturers and big business on the East Coast, but
industries in Ohio, Midwestern farmers, and cotton growers
in the South."The whole nation felt the pinch and many minds were changed.
Germany was to blame; German submarines had become
intolerable.

In the same way, the banks joined the pro-war side. They had
lent billions of dollars to the Allies-nineteen times more
than they had lent to Germany-and they lived in dread of a
German victory. Who would repay the multi-billion dollar
loans if the Allies were defeated? For the bankers it was
imperative that their debtors win.The Balfour Declaration had influenced the American press to
switch to a pro-war policy. Many publishers were Jews and
the Allies' war now became their war for Jerusalem. They
felt Jerusalem was well worth a war; America owed it to
them.Wilson was just at the end of his tether. He was besieged by
all the interests fanning the flames of war. He was
stigmatized for being "humiliated by German submarines" and
"betraying national honor."The pro-war coalition was now moving to force the
president's hand. On February 7 the State Department told
the arms dealers to defend themselves by any useful means.
Wilson was pressured to endorse in Congress a demand giving
him "the power to arm merchant vessels." Such vessels would
force German submarines to attack or be sunk, as soon as
they appeared. After four days of debate the House approved
the motion. The Senate resisted for another ten days as
twelve senators highly critical of the motion filibustered.
Wilson accused the senators of reducing "the great
government of the United States to ridiculous impotence."
Since he could not obtain confirmation in the Senate, Wilson
issued a presidential decree authorizing the conversion of
merchant ships into de facto warships.As expected, a number of American ships were torpedoed,
among them the Algonquin and the Viligentia.Yet even after these sinkings the American people, as
distinct from the pro-war special interest groups, did not
let themselves be carried away.House complained bitterly: "In Missouri they don't seem to
understand what's at stake. That's the pathetic side of this
business." House found it incomprehensible and "pathetic"
that middle America would not rush enthusiastically into a
blaze of bullets, bombs, and shells.The pro-war coalition created a way to turn the American
people-those who had to do the fighting-into determined foes
of the Germans. The sure-fire plan was known as the
"Zimmerman telegram" affair.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The "Zimmerman Telegram"

No one has ever understood very well what took place in the
United States at the time of the "Zimmerman telegram"
affair, except that it was responsible for turning the
American people in favor of war.It was said at the time that Germany had proposed an
alliance with Mexico. For the Europeans of 1917, Mexico was
a little bit like Papua: they knew very little about it.
They had a vague notion of bandits, sombreros, and cactus.
Few people had any knowledge of Mexico's culture or its
history.The Americans, on the other hand, had a far greater
awareness of Mexico. Mexico had lost half its territory to
the United States. Mexicans still grieved in 1917 for the
relatively recent loss of Texas, California, Nevada, Arizona
and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. To them it was not only
their land but their Hispanic heritage that had been taken
away. For centuries San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego,
Salinas, Sacramento, Albuquerque, Pueblo, Alamogordo, El
Paso, San Antonio, Amarillo were wonderful names that had
been a part of them and very much remained in their
patriotic consciousness.Americans, however, were now living in the former Hispanic
provinces and did not take kindly to anything resembling a
Mexican claim. There was fear and resentment on both sides
of the border.

There was renewed resentment when the United States navy
occupied the Mexican port of Vera Cruz and General Pershing
led an army into Mexican territory. In those days it did not
take much to bring in the U.S. gunboats. At the slightest
sign of unrest, American troops were sent to "restore
order."After 1900 the United States invaded Nicaragua, Honduras,
the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and in 1916, Mexico. Without
too much worry about "the rights of self-determination," the
Wilson administration presided over the invasion of Haiti in
1915, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua in 1916. Just as
Louisiana and Alaska had been purchased earlier, the administration bought the Virgin Islands from
Denmark. It is not an act of Yankee-baiting to recall such
imperialism but rather a matter of stating historical facts.Professor Bowan, director of the American Geographical
Society, made the point candidly: "Since the annexation of
the Hawaiian Islands the United States have spread their
influence and control over new territories faster than any
other power including imperial Russia. From 1908 to 1917
there were eleven annexations, protectorates, purchases
extending over half million square miles. It was
impressive."The United States, like all other great powers, had not
forged their unity by handing out candy to their neighbors.
They had used force, even on their own citizens in the
Southern states. The Indians had been forcibly removed from
their tribal lands, until they no longer were a factor.While President Wilson talked of freedom of the seas and the
rights of self-determination to the people of Europe, he
refrained from dwelling on that subject on the home front.
In 1917 the United States invaded Mexican territory and
there was little debate on human rights.

As for the Germans, who felt the United States might attack
them at any moment, it is possible they might have had some
interest in allying themselves with Mexico. They had seen
France seek an alliance with Russia against their country.
They had seen the British turn to Japan in 1914 and urge the
Japanese to declare war on Germany.It is therefore conceivable that Germany wished to keep
American troops on the Mexican border. A conflict would have
diverted American troops and resources away from Europe.
German interests and Mexican nostalgia for its lost
provinces could provide the basis of a Mexican-German
alliance against a British-American coalition.As to whether such a Mexican-German alliance was ever
consummated, the answer is negative. No treaty was ever
signed at any time. It may have been considered, but even
that is conjectural. The possibility was based solely on the
content of the "Zimmerman telegram," of which the dispatch
and interception have remained clouded with mystery to this
day. The exploitation of this dubious document shook America
to its foundation. The Allies had finally hit the jackpot,
the break House had worked and waited for so long.The "Zimmerman telegram" burst out of shadows of intrigue.
In February 1917, one of House's men, Frank Polk, telephoned
his boss: "The British Admiralty has intercepted and decoded
a sensational telegram sent by the German foreign minister
to his ambassador in Mexico, Herr Eckhardt." He did not know
the content but believed it was to the effect that Eckhardt
had been instructed to conclude a German-Mexican alliance whereby Germany would help Mexico recover Texas, New Mexico
and Arizona.The phone call was very strange. There was confusion as to
the source of the information, which to this day has not
been cleared up. First, the British Admiralty was supposed
to have intercepted the telegram, then followed a second
version, and a third and a fourth version, all contradicting
each other.Professor Seymour examined the event: "A messenger carrying
the telegram had been apprehended by our border patrol near
the Mexican border ... We [U.S. intelligence operatives]
made a copy of the dispatch sent to Halifax among
Bernstorff's papers... The dispatch was hidden in a
mysterious trunk which the British seized."These different versions were floating around Washington
when House added yet another variant: he had not been
informed by Polk but by Blinker Hall, chief of British naval
intelligence. "It was Blinker Hall who pulled off this coup.
He decoded the telegram and sent it to us." (House, II, 498)Fifty years later Professor Renouvin offered another
explanation: "The coded message was sent to New York by the
American ambassador in Berlin and transmitted on the British
cable line." This last version is just as bizarre as the
others and does little to dispel the confusion."Many people expressed doubts as to the authenticity of this
document," said Professor Seymour. One fact, however,
remained: House was on record, the 26th day of February
1917, as stating the information had come from a phone call.
He did not at that time have the original document or a copy
of it nor did he have the testimony of a direct witness. It
has also been established that the British didn't intercept
the telegram at the German embassy in Mexico. House's
declaration on February 26 was based on hearsay and lies.
"The way in which this dispatch was intercepted provides
fuel for endless conjectures," wrote Professor Seymour.

A number of Washington observers were puzzled by the time
sequence of the affair. The telegram was dated January 16,
1917. House revealed its existence on February 26. Forty
days had elapsed. Why would the British arid House have
waited forty long days to release news that would bring
America closer to war? For them, time was of the essence.Deliberations over dates and facts did not bother House and
Polk. The only thing that mattered was to use the telegram,
unverified as it was, to anger and panic the American people
into the war."Mr. Polk," wrote Seymour, "thoroughly exploited this
communication: the publication of the Berlin telegram would
change irritation into rage. It would strengthen enormously
the support people would give Wilson in any action he might
take against Germany."

Thus, this highly suspicious document, which many believe
today to have been cooked up by British espionage
operatives-who are specially trained in the art of forgery
and provocation-was waved in Wilson's face by House as
irrefutable proof of German perfidy.Somehow the Zimmerman telegram left Wilson skeptical. He
wondered whether just a phone call offered enough evidence.
He had seen no proof of its authenticity and felt uneasy.
Besides, said Seymour, "Wilson was troubled that the
publication of the dispatch might trigger a crisis he could
not control." House harassed the president. He demanded the
dispatch be released for immediate publication. On the
following day February 27, House wrote to Wilson: "I hope
you will publish the dispatch tomorrow. It will make a
profound impression on Congress and the whole country."
(House, II, 497) House was so sure the president would do as
he was asked that he cabled Ambassador Page in London: "As
far as we are concerned we already are at war."Despite all the pressure Wilson hesitated. House became
frantic: "X called me twice from Washington. The president's
inertia worries him greatly. Like Lansing he wants me to
come to Washington in order to push Wilson into action."
(House, II, 505)House had become the Moses of the pro-war lobby. "All [the
war lobbyists] would turn to House as the only man who could
be relied on to direct the president's will," wrote Seymour.In his note, dated March 27, House wrote that he had gone to
hustle Wilson: "He [the president] confessed to me he did
not feel up to assuming high presidential functions at such
a critical time." Then House begged the question: "What is
needed is a man made of tougher stuff, with a less
philosophical mind than Wilson. A man who can conduct a
brutal war."(House, II, 510). Who could this man be except House? Wilson
spoke nobly during America's last days of peace:

America's entry into the war will mean that we are losing
our heads like the others ... It will mean the majority of
people in this hemisphere are falling prey to the insanity
of war and are no longer thinking ... Once the people are at
war they will forget there was such a thing as tolerance ...
What a frightful responsibility it is to have to lead our
great peaceful people in the most terrible war, the most
devastating that has ever befallen the world and which
appears to sap the very core of civilization!

During the month of March House would mercilessly pursue the
peace idealist. The president was no match for the
relentless House and finally gave in.On April 6, 1917 the president went to Capitol Hill with
clenched teeth and announced that America had declared war:
"The reason for our action will not be vengeance. We do not
want to affirm by a victory the material strength of the
United States, we simply want to defend the rights of
humanity of which we are the only champions." (House, II,
514)

As stirred as they were by Allied propaganda and the
Zimmerman telegram, the American people were still wondering
whether they had been told the truth. House complained that
Americans "just could not get the message.

The Germans had to fight the country which they had done
everything to keep out of the war. It was a severe blow,
which they hoped would be offset by the overthrow of the
Russian empire.The tsar's abdication on March 15, 1917 did not end the war
between Russia and Germany. As dispirited as the Russian
armies were, the war went on. The Kerensky regime did not
cease hostilities, and managed to keep more than one million
German soldiers away from the Western front. American
intervention made it imperative for Germany to make peace
with Russia. Germany's survival depended on how long it
would take to disengage its army from Russia, and how long
it would take for American troops to cross the Atlantic.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Revolution in Russia

Germany had managed to delay America's intervention from
1915 to 1917. Submarines had been withheld from combat,
apologies given and reparations paid, but time had now run
out.Within months the United States would be able to send
750,000 soldiers to do battle in Europe. The American navy
would seize German ships stationed in neutral ports and
South American navies would be pressured into following
suit. The navy would in fact replace the 600,000 tons of
British shipping which the Germans sank every month. Within
a year, two million U.S. troops would be fighting alongside
the Allies. Germany lost its race against time.The Russian front had been baneful for Germany. It was
responsible for losing the Marne battle in France, when
General von Moltke, panicked by the Russian advance in
Prussia, had deprived his right flank of two army corps.It was a war both the Kaiser and Tsar Nicholas II had tried
to avoid to the last minute. The two monarchs were cousins
and maintained good personal and national relations. The
tsar was a peaceful man, rather soft and sad. He would never
have been involved in war had he not been railroaded into it
by the Pan-Slavic cabal and other conspirators. He regretted
constantly that he had been forced to declare war on Germany
against his wish.

The Germans had immediately tried to bring to an end a
futile war which tied down half their army. In December,
1914 the Kaiser delegated his adviser, Jewish financier
Albert Ballin, who owned most of the German merchant fleet,
to negotiate a truce, with the king of Denmark acting as
official intermediary. Talks were held with Count Witte, a
leading Russian diplomat. The negotiations stalled when the
tsar felt he could not make Peace without the Allies'
agreement.From March to May 1915 a new attempt for peace was made.
German Foreign Minister von Jagow informed the tsar that
Germany, in exchange for peace, would prevail on its own
Turkish allies to let Russia realize its ambitions in Constantinople and the Dardanelles-where the
British had just received a severe thrashing. The secret
proposals, dated March 10 and May 25, 1915, were transmitted
by Maria Vasiltshikova, the tsaritsa's lady- in-waiting.The war lobby in Russia quickly sabotaged this initiative.
No sooner was the tsar in possession of the proposals than a
plot was engineered to disgrace the tsaritsa's aide. The
tsar failed to stand by her and let her be stripped of her
title and exiled by his own enemies.Three months later a third attempt was made. This time it
was conducted by the president of the Deutsche Bank, Herr
Monkievich. The new offering still included Constantinople,
and also added a ten billion gold mark loan. On August 11,
1915 the negotiations were scuttled by the pro-war Minister
Sazanov. A fourth attempt, organized by the grand marshals
of Germany and Russia, also failed.The Marxist revolution of March 1917 was launched to the
cries of "Down with the war!" that was good news for the
German military planners. The tsar had recently declared
again his unswerving support for the allies, and his
overthrow changed Russia's position. But if the German
government was to get any benefit from a Russian withdrawal,
speed was of the essence: the Zimmerman telegram affair was
hastening America's entry into the war.The tsar's demise was well organized and swift. Despite his
weakness and incompetence, he had decided to lead the
Russian armies personally, with disastrous results. Many of
his generals were equally inept, and his ministers were
chosen on the advice of the lice-ridden degenerate Rasputin,
who was himself advised by his constant shadow, the Jewish
usurer Simanovich.The tsar referred to Rasputin as "a saint called Gregory
from the province of Tobolsk." The Rasputin-Simanovich
manipulation of the imperial family had gone on for eleven
years. Rasputin had mesmerized the tsaritsa and her
dauughters. Rasputin spoke and the tsaritsa rushed to
implement his orders, while at the same time she treated her
husband with condescension: "I suffer for you just as if you
were a helpless small child in need of guidance but yet
listen to bad advisers, while the man sent by God tells you
what to do." Rasputin's hold was such that when he sent an
apple to the tsar to "strengthen his resolve," the potentate
of all the Russias did not dare eat it because he regarded
it as a holy relic.Rasputin's reign finally came to an end on December 17,
1916, when he was poisoned, repeatedly shot and then thrown
into the icy Neva river by his enemies at court.

The imperial family was devastated by Rasputin's death. They
followed, pathetic and isolated, his funeral cortege. His
hearse carried an icon inscribed with the names Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and
Anastasia: the tsaritsa and her daughters.The British ambassador in Russia himself was at the center
of a scheme to overthrow the tsar if he should ever lose his
stomach for war. London was apprehensive: the shock of
Rasputin's demise might drive the tsar to peace. The
ambassador had gathered a coterie of wealthy bankers,
liberal capitalists, conservative politicians, and
disgruntled aristocrats to overthrow the tsar. Because of
his hatred for Germany, the British favored Grand Duke
Nicholas to succeed the tsar.Since 1914 the British ambassador had aided and abetted the
conspirators, but their very disparity neutralized any
positive effect they might have had on the Russian monarchy.
Nevertheless, British intervention into the internal affairs
of Russia robbed Russian nationalists of any chance of
surviving the coming onslaught of international communism.While Russia was drowning in subversion and treason, only
the tsaritsa displayed any firmness of character. She
exhorted her husband to assert himself and take charge:

You must not give proof of weakness. The Duma has no right
to make war and peace pronouncements: that's your decision.
Bang the table with your fist, do not make concessions, show
them who is the boss, and believe your tough little wife.
Russia likes the bite of the whip, Russia craves it. Be like
Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible or Tsar Paul, crush all
before you!"

The pious and humble tsar could neither conceive nor
comprehend such exhortations. He prayed God for a solution
but he was paralyzed with indecision. The British had spread
rumors that the tsaritsa was pro-German, because of her
German background, and was working for a separate peace with
Germany. General Denikin wrote in his memoirs: "Everyone
knows the tsaritsa is demanding a separate peace at any
cost." There has never been any documentation to back this
allegation. Nor has there ever been proof that Rasputin was
connected with the Germans. Trotsky himself admitted in his
History of the Russian Revolution: "Even after the
Revolution not the slightest proof was discovered that
established a link between Rasputin and the German Army."As peace-loving as the tsar was, he remained totally loyal
to the Allies, who for their part were only using him. On
March 7, 1917, only a week before being overthrown, and five
months before being murdered at Ekaterinburg, the tsar gave
assurances to French Minister Doumergue that Russia would
remain firmly committed to the Allied war.The tsar's unrequited loyalty to the allies had divorced him
from the realities of Russia. The war had drained Russia's
enormous resources and food supplies had been reduced by
half. Bankers' speculations had raised the cost of living by
300 percent and the people went hungry. "There will be
massive food riots at any time," a police report stated in
January 1917.

Gloom was the order of the day among the tsar's corrupt and
incompetent ministers. Navy minister Grigorivich kept
repeating: "No one in the armed forces trusts us any more."
War minister Polivanov lamented: "The dam is cracking and
catastrophe can no longer be contained."Imperial Russia was propped up by the rotten pillars of a
false elite. On February 23, 1917 St. Petersburg had a
garrison of 180,000 men, almost ten divisions. Four days
later they would flee in panic.The revolution started with a march of 90,000 women textile
workers. They were on strike because they were hungry, and
for no other reason. To cries of "Bread not war," they
marched in orderly fashion, without the backing of any
political parties.The next day the men, who had noticed little police
interference, went on strike. They joined the women marchers
to the cries of "Down with the war" and "Down with
autocracy." Some students and petty-bourgeois elements also
joined in the improvised march. Not a single political party
supported these demonstrations. The crowd was tired of so
much death in a war they did not understand, and tired of
being hungry. When the police were ordered to contain them,
the crowd good-naturedly invited them to join the march.
There were no incidents.The authorities and the bureaucracy had no understanding of
what motivated these people. The tsaritsa blamed the
situation on a Jewish politician she called Kedrinsky: "I
would like to believe that this Kedrinsky will be hanged for
his seditious speeches. He must hang now. That will be an
example to the others," she cabled her husband."Kedrinsky," or rather Aleksandr Kerensky, a left-wing
socialist, was instead invited to join the cabinet a week
later.

On February 25, 1917, the streets of St. Petersburg were
filled. Orators harangued the crowds. War minister Polivanov
was unconcerned: "There are," he cabled the tsar at Mogilev,
"a few strikes. They are of no importance." The tsaritsa
informed her husband the next day: "Everything is quiet in
St. Petersburg."Nevertheless, there had been some shooting, and some people
had been killed. The tsaritsa sent another telegram in the
evening: "Things are taking a turn for the worse in the
capital." She urged that order be restored.On February 27, 1917 a battalion of Georgians was brought
into St. Petersburg. The fourth company of the Pavlosky
regiment suddenly started shooting at the police, but
casualties were light. Some of the mutineers were jailed,
but others took their place. The incident created enough
confusion to shift the soldiers' loyalties to the side of
the protestors. Armed men began marching with the crowds
they had been sent to stop.

The Russian government declared a state of emergency in St.
Petersburg, but the bureaucracy was in such disarray that the notices
could not be posted for lack of brushes and glue. Trotsky commented
sarcastically: "The authorities couldn't even stick a poster
on a wall."Police chief Rodzianko sent the tsar a telegram: "The moment
of truth has arrived. The future of the country and the
dynasty is being decided now." The tsar read the telegram
but did not understand it: "This fat Rodzianko is again sending me nonsense I do not even think
of bothering to answer."In the face of government indecision, the crowds took the
initiative. Prisons were opened and prisoners joined a march
towards the Mariensky Palace, where the government was in
session. The politicians and bureaucrats were terrified at
the news. They switched off all the lights and hid
themselves in closets and underneath desks and tables. The
panic subsided when it was learned the crowd had gone
somewhere else. The president of the council, Prince
Golitsin, was so shaken up he asked Rodzianko: "Be kind enough not to ask me for anything,
because I have resigned."

Meanwhile the crowd had entered another palace, the Taurid,
where the Duma, the Russian legislative assembly, conducted
its deliberations. The tsar had just dissolved the Duma, but
a provisional one had been set up in its stead. The chamber
was crowded with thousands of people, with hundreds making
speeches in a carnival atmosphere. Kerensky rushed to the
crowd with open arms. No one quite knew how to deal with his
effusions. New cabinet ministers were appointed at random,
and Prince Lvov was hosted on a group's shoulders and declared head of the
government by acclamation.The only cohesive groups amid the chaos were the soviets.
Soviet cells spread across Russia waiting for the opportune
moment to move against the wobbly Russian government. It is remarkable that until this
point, not a single leftist leader had directed the crowds.
People demonstrated against hunger and the war, but made no specific demands. Confusion
was the order of the day.Far away at the front the tsar sent his wife a telegram on
February 8: "The weather here is splendid. I am sure you are
well and peaceful. Strong troop detachments have been sent
to the front. Lovingly yours, Nika." The tsaritsa was quick to reply that all was not well: "It is
necessary to make concessions. Strikes are continuing and
many troops have gone over to the revolution.'At Helsinki several officers had been thrown alive beneath
the frozen ice. It was only then that the tsar realized
something was wrong. He left his headquarters to join his family. His train was constantly
stopped by the mobs who had taken control of the railways. At St.
Petersburg his personal guard had mutinied against its
officers and was demanding their arrest, the infantry had
gone over to the revolution, and most of the generals had
fled, including the governor of St. Petersburg.On March 14, 1917 the tsar, crushed by widespread betrayal,
agreed to the formation of a new government. But it was too
late. His weakness had allowed treason to prosper and his
power was gone. Grand Duke Nicholas urged him to abdicate.
The tsar wanted nothing more. He persevered at his position
only from a sense of God-ordered obligation to fulfill a
sacred duty. He informed his generals that he was willing to
sign their demand: "I agree to abdicate in favor of my son
who will stay by my side until his majority, and to name my
brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich as regent of
Russia."The abdication was not enough for some politicians. On March
15, 1917 Petrograd representatives Gushkov and Chulgin
demanded that the tsar sign his abdication in favor of his
brother Michael alone, and accept Prince Lvov as council
president.The next day the reign of Tsar Michael ended abruptly when
the crowd shouted that they didn't want any Romanov on the
throne. Thus ended one of Europe's oldest dynasties: it was
shouted out of power.

The tsar never realized that his weakness was responsible
for his demise. In his farewell address to the Russian army
he still displayed an amazing lack of perception as well as
a misguided loyalty to the Allies who had betrayed him:
"Whoever thinks of peace in these days, whoever wants peace,
is a traitor to the fatherland." Keeping an alliance with
unworthy allies was more important than saving his own
country.The new government seemed to be even more determined than
the tsar to keep Russia in the war. On March 21, 1917 the
new foreign minister Paul Milyukov declared: "The
international obligations which will be honored by the
Russian Republic also include agreements concluded
secretly." Thus, despite 4 million dead, the new Russian
republic would continue sacrificing Russian blood for the
Allies.The Allies were delighted. The French and British
politicians were of the opinion that the new Russian
republic would send more troops to the front.The republic's commitment to war was bad news for Germany.
It meant maintaining a huge army on the Eastern Front and
risking being overun by the Americans. For German war
stategists the demise of the new Russian republic was a
matter of survival. It had to be brought down at any cost.The downfall of the tsar did not bring the Communists to
power. In the spring of 1917 there was scarcely a single
hard-core revolutionary in St. Petersburg or Moscow. Stalin
had returned from Siberia but he lived in the shadows, barely surviving. The Germans knew the only man who
could make Russia explode was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also
known as Lenin. They also knew that to enlist Lenin for that
purpose was very dangerous: he could inflame Europe as well
as Russia.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Lenin Returns to Russia

In March 1917 Lenin was almost unknown in Europe except
among a few groups of the extreme left. German intelligence,
however, knew who Lenin was: he was more powerful than a million Russian
soldiers. The Austrians could have captured him at the
beginning of August, 1914 in Cracow, Poland, but they let
him escape to Switzerland. For two and a half years he lived
in a room atop a Zurich sausage factory, breathing its rank
fumes. He had no money and often thought of committing
suicide. He seemed to have lost hope of ever coming to
power: "We are old and we will not live to see the decisive
battles of the revolution."Lenin represented the hard core of the revolution. He was
uncompromising and could not stand half-solutions. The whole
bourgeois system had to be smashed to bits. There would be
no quarter, no concessions. He had become a deadly enemy of
the moderate left, which he saw as compromised in both
ideology and action.Lenin would rather wander in the political desert than
tolerate any sort of social democrat or Menshevik. Moderate
revolutionaries sickened him. He regarded them as false
revolutionaries. He had no time for soft organizations and
believed that the revolution had to be handled by
specialists or "professional revolutionary technicians," as
he called them. Crowds were only useful in the framework of
an iron organization, subordinated to professional
revolutionaries. He compared the implementation of
revolution to a surgical procedure: everything had to be
prepared, cold-blooded, and skilled.Lenin's will was cold and indomitable. Those who knew him
said he was all brain. He certainly was the brain of the
revolution. When he died, his brain was measured at 1700
cubic millimeters, among the largest ever recorded. Now his
mental power would change the world.

In 1914 the Bolshevik party had consisted of only a few
people in Russia. There were seven members of the
directorate, three of whom were undercover police. Lenin had
to flee to Cracow and then to Switzerland.

His mood alternated from suicidal at his lack of means to
elation at the raging world war. He savored the titanic
clash of the world's imperialist and bourgeois powers and
saw war as the salvation of Bolshevism: "Without the war" he
wrote, "we would see the union of all the capitalists
against us." He regarded the devastation of Europe as the
clearing away of obstacles for building universal communism.For Germany, Lenin represented the last chance to pry Russia
away from the Allies. The March 1917 upheaval in St.
Petersburg had overthrown the tsar but kept Russia in the
war. The Germans felt Lenin had the power to plunge Russia
in a bloody all-consuming revolution which would make it
impossible to continue the war against Germany.The Allies had not the slightest knowledge of Lenin but the
Germans had had him under close scrutiny since 1914. The
decision to use Lenin was not taken lightly. The Germans
were well aware that Lenin wanted to bring down imperial
Germany even more than imperial Russia. For Lenin world
revolution was to start from Germany, not Russia. Germany
had a ready- made mass of workers organized along political
lines, and the Socialists were close to a majority in the
Reichtag. Russia, on the other hand, was composed of eighty
percent peasants and two percent workers, who were
unorganized and unindoctrinated.Only war, by displacing the peasants from their land, would
make them susceptible to indoctrination. The notion that
they could own the land they tilled would bring them to
communism, although Lenin did not consider them a major
asset compared to the enormous German proletariat.Germany's decision to use Lenin in 1917 was ill-timed for
his schemes for world conquest. His agreement to go to
Russia was perhaps the greatest mistake of his life. If he
had had the patience to wait another eighteen months he
might have benefited from Germany's 1918 debacle and taken
over Berlin in place of the mediocre Liebknecht. Lenin had
the genius for organization and action which Liebknecht
lacked. He might easily have imposed his will on Germany.
The right man at the right place at the right time, he could
have launched his world revolution from Germany and swept
Europe away.Lenin always regarded his action in St. Petersburg as
secondary. His prime interest was in Germany. He was not
interested in any country as such, but only in its
revolutionary potential. Yet although he knew Germany
offered the most fertile ground, Lenin opted to lead the
revolution in St. Petersburg. For once his cold reasoning
was overruled by his need for action. When the Germans
knocked at his door, he could not resist the call to
organize a revolution, even in the wrong country.

The Germans played their Lenin card with mathematical
precision, but politics, like war, can be full of surprises.
They expected Lenin to put a swift end to the armchair revolutionaries who had committed
Russia to the Allies' war, yet Lenin almost failed and had
to flee to Finland for safety.Trotsky was still in New York and Stalin, although back from
Siberia, was in hiding. Other Communist leaders had not
fared well in the March revolution, demonstrating themselves
to be mediocrities. In fact, some Germans had favored
backing Stalin: they thought they could control him more
easily than Lenin.Both Lenin and Stalin were regarded as akin to germ warfare:
the virus had to bring down a hostile neighbor without
affecting those who had released it. Would the virus die off
after having performed its assigned task? Could it be
contained? These were the questions which preoccupied the
German high command.The Germans would achieve the first phase of their
objective: Lenin would eventually put an end to Russia's
participation in the war. The second phase was to destroy or
contain the deadly virus. Lenin's duplicity, however, was
greater than that of any German Machiavelli: he quickly
demonstrated who was using whom. A willing tool of the
Germans because they had given him the opportunity to
implement his revolution, now that he had what he wanted
Lenin felt free to turn against Germany.Once in power Lenin would develop a policy of no war, no
peace, which would drag the Germans into months of sterile
talks. Germany remained an inch short of victory, but was
doomed to remain there until its defeat.Orginally, Lenin had tried to bypass the German authorities,
planning to cross Germany clandestinely, with a forged
Scandinavian passport and a false beard and wig. Trotsky
recalled: "All the plans of escape with make-up, wigs, and
false passports collapsed one after another."Before leaving Zurich, Lenin had been appalled at the
bourgeois character of the March revolution. He sent a
telegram to his followers in St. Petersburg: "Absolute
suspicion. Deny the new government any backing. Our party
would be shamed forever if it became involved in such
treason. I would rather break with anyone in our party if
that person were going to make any type of concessions to
`social patriotism.' "Concessions were, however, being made at this very moment by
his Bolshevik comrade Leon Rosenfeld, also known as George
Kamenev, together with the 19 Bolshevik delegates to the
government council.

Overcoming its fear and repugnance of the part-Jewish
communist leader, the German government made a special
sealed train available to Lenin, his wife, and 15 other
Bolsheviks of his choice. They were shipped across Germany
to the Baltic Sea, where they stopped at Stockholm and
finally reached St. Petersburg on April 3, 1917.The bourgeois revolutionaries sent a delegation to greet
Lenin at the Finnish border. There they presented him with flowers, which
he hated. All their eagerness to please left Lenin cold and
contemptuous. He turned his back on them and delivered a
short but radical speech.Lenin's attitude was reported to Kerensky and his entourage
of craven politicians. They concluded that Lenin was driving
a hard bargain. At the same time they were dogged by a
morbid fear that he did not simply want to join the
political club and share its spoils with them.

Kerensky had attempted to allay the fears of his colleagues,
who had spread the word that Lenin was a German agent: "Just
wait until Lenin arrives and you will find out he is a good
man." The accusation was meant to discredit Lenin in the
eyes of Russian workers. The "social patriots," as Trotsky
called the bourgeois revolutionaries, had defined their
policy toward Lenin in the Duma: "The very fact that Lenin
came back via Germany will harm his prestige to such an
extent that there will be nothing more to fear from him."Lenin had anticipated this accusation. Before boarding the
German train he had garnered testimonials of good behavior
from socialist leaders all across Europe, including the
German Marxist theoretician Levy. One testimonial to his
good Marxism, co-signed by Europe's Marxist luminaries,
read: "The Russian internationalists who are now leaving for
Russia to serve the revolution will be helping us by
fostering uprisings among the proletarians of other
countries, particularly those of Germany and Austria,
against their own governments." The testimonial did not
mention by what means the "internationalists" were returning
to Russia, and the reference to "particularly those of
Germany and Austria" was inserted at Lenin's request in
order to refute the accusation that he was a German agent.The accusation was purely political. Lenin had been given
money and the use of a train by Germany, but he was never an
agent as such. He used the Germans for his own purpose, just
as the Germans had used him for theirs. Lenin could hardly
wait to destroy imperial Germany once his Russian
opportunity had been seized.Lenin was not the only recipient of foreign money. Trotsky
received substantial funds from Jewish banker Jacob Schiff
in September 1917. Schiff's correspondent in Stockholm, the
Warburg Bank, even managed Trotsky's account in the Swedish
capital. Lenin, like Trotsky, gladly accepted money wherever
it came from. If the bankers wanted to invest in the
business of revolution that was their business; Lenin would
just use the money to achieve his goals.Lenin's eagerness to accept any kind of money led the
financiers of the revolution to believe they would get a
return on their investments. With the exception of the
Jewish bankers, Lenin repaid his financial bankers not with money but with revolutions in their own countries. Lenin's
policy was to dupe the enemy at all times: agreements and
debts were only valid in the eye of the bourgeois. For Lenin
they were the tools of expediency. In this respect he proved
himself the supreme dialectical materialist, far above any
of his colleagues, who were always embarassed to talk about
Germany's financing of Lenin. The historical fact was that
without the German millions and the Jewish millions,
advanced at a critical time, Lenin's revolution and plans
for world subversion would never have gotten off the ground.
It was a ludicrous demonstration of Marxist prudery to
promote the thesis that the revolution was financed by
passing the hat among the proletariat. Communist historians
have made themselves ridiculous in attempting to gloss over
Lenin's most outstanding characteristic: his masterly
handling of money in the service of his revolution. For
Lenin the notion that the end justified the means was never
an issue.Although charges of German backing raised against Lenin had
a certain impact, they were weakened by the mediocrity of
those who made them. From March 1917 until Lenin's final
grab for power, there were four successive governments
within seven months. They were all composed of bourgeois
revolutionaries, each of which competed for the position of
most inept and most mediocre. Their dismal performance would
drive the disappointed masses to the one man who appeared to
know what he wanted: Lenin. His talent for organization was
everywhere apparent. Every street, every building, every
factory was the target of Lenin's agents. "He deftly
manipulated," wrote Souvarine, "the levers of the party and
utilized professional revolutionaries to the best of their
abilities, while at the same time justifying his tactical
plan doctrinally.".Peace had now become a popular issue. The bourgeois
revolutionaries felt uneasy any time they heard the crowd
shout "Down with the war." Tsarism had only recently been
overthrown to the same "Down with the war!" shouts. But the
war kept going and people continued to die at the front and
starve behind the lines. Everywhere the people had had
enough.Lenin correctly sized up the situation. On March 27, 1917
the Petrograd Soviet publicly disavowed Milyukov and his
promises to the Allies. The soldiers' soviet on the Eastern
front had voted overwhelmingly against continuation of the
war, as indicated by the votes of their delegates at Minsk:
610 against 8. "Down with the war!" was accompanied by
"Peace without annexations or reparations." This formula,
devised by Lenin, was all the more clever because it aped
the high-minded principles of PresidentWilson.Milyukov lost his ministry at the beginning of May 1917.
Prince Lvov immediately made concessions, offering five
seats to the socialists. He remained president purely for
decorum's sake. The most powerful man at this time was War
Minister Kerensky, but he did not put an end to the war. The
soldiers repeated the slogan: "If peace is infamous, give us
an infamous peace" from one end of the front to the other. Some priests
got into the act by preaching peace at any cost. Deputy
Patriarch Filonenky was cheered by the troops. "Soldiers,"
he declared at the Duma, "were kissing my hands and feet."
Months went by and the frightful toll of war continued to
mount, from the Baltic to the Caspian. Scurvy and typhus
reaped a grim harvest. The bourgeois revolutionaries did
nothing, and the soldiers just walked away from the front.
In a few months, more than 2 million soldiers deserted. Most
of them were peasants going home to take over the land that
had been promised to them. Train loads of reinforcements
would reach the front almost empty. Soldiers literally
jumped out of them all along the route.

French and British socialist leaders came to Russia to
harangue their socialist counterparts in Petrograd: their
mission, they explained, was to rekindle the martial ardor
of the Russian army. The visit proved embarrassing to the
bourgeois revolutionaries. The British emissaries tried to
salvage the situation by promising Constantinople to Russia
as just one reward among many for remaining in a glorious
war. Such promises only infuriated the people all the more,
and the Allies were accused of practicing "Pan-Slavic
charlatanism."The Allied emissaries included wealthy French Communist
Party boss Marcel Cachin, who was informed that the Russian
government would support a popular plebiscite in
Alsace-Lorraine after the war ended. The British were
dumbfounded when the Russian government proposed not only
the liberation of peoples conquered during the war but of
all oppressed peoples. Particular reference was made to the
people of Egypt and Ireland. The British socialists were
particularly shocked at the notion of liberating Ireland.
The French socialists were also nervous at the prospect of
liberating French colonies without the opportunity of
socializing them first.Back in Paris and London politicians of all stripes were
wondering whether it was Wilson who had whispered such
outrageous suggestions into the ears of the Russian
govenment.

***

The Allies were not about to let the Russian alliance
disintegrate for the sake of policies which, even if agreed
upon, were not to be implemented before the end of the war
in any event. In that spirit, they agreed to the Russian
radicals' slogans: "Peace without annexations or
reparations"; "An internationally controlled plebiscite for
Alsace-Lorraine"; "Responsibility for the war belongs to
everybody and everybody must participate in indemnifying the
victims."In exchange for the acceptance of these terms, the Russian
government was prepared to launch one last offensive to speed the end
of the war. French general Nivelle bombarded the Russian
High Command with demands that general Alexyev start the
offensive immediately.

***

Kerensky was still attempting to placate the Allies when he
decided to go to the front and raise the troops' morale for
a final battle. By then the Russian army was a mere facade.
Seventy generals had been discharged and many others had
been assassinated by their men. Thousands of Communist
agents had virtually replaced the generals and were
manipulating the troops for their own purpose. Kerensky,
however, surprised many by his tireless efforts on the front
from May 15 to June 24, 1917. Despite chaoticconditions, his oratory managed to inspire more than 300,000
men to fight one more battle.On June 24, 1917 the men were placed under the command of
General Brusilov, and. Kerensky ordered a new offensive. On
July 1, 1917 Brusilov threw his 23 divisions in a
30-mile-wide assault with the objective of capturing
Lemberg. The Russians broke through the Austrian-German
lines and took 10,000 prisoners by nightfall.The gallant Russian effort was stymied, however, when two
reserve divisions refused to follow up the day's victory. Brusilov
conceded there was no way to force them to battle.The German high command, anticipating this last Russian
offensive, had rushed six additional divisions to the 72
already fighting on the Eastern front. The German
counter-offensive was formidable. On July 19, 1917 the
Germans drove Brusilov out of Galicia. Over the next ten
days Brusilov would lose 160,000 men. On the Baltic front
General von Huttier wiped out Russia's Twelfth Army and
captured Riga, the largest port of the Baltic states. Russia
had been dealt a devastating military blow.

The news of Brusilov's offensive unleashed massive
demonstrations in St. Petersburg. For the first time the
Bolsheviks mixed with the crowd for the purpose of directing
it. Bolshevik agents shouted: "All power to the soviets!"
ceaselessly and soon the cry was taken up by other
demonstrators. Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein) had
finally joined Lenin, after being detained in London.
Bronstein shed his New York name to become Trotsky, the
communist leader, the right hand man of Lenin. Both men were
vehement and radical orators whose fiery speeches made the
bourgeois revolutionaries sound quite insipid. The crowds flocked over
to Lenin in droves.In June 1917, however, the Congress of Soviets was a long
way from controlling Russia. 105 Bolsheviks had been elected to the
Duma, but that only represented some 14 percent of the
assembly. Lenin realized that the Russian proletariat was
"less conscious, less organized, less prepared than the
proletariats in other countries," and he was anxious to get
beyond the Russian state as quickly as possible: the
revolution must be Europe-wide or it would fail."Socialism," explained Lenin, "cannot win immediately or
directly in Russia." With only one sixth of the power in the
hands of the soviets, Lenin tried to explain his policies
for solving Russia's problems directly to the people. The
process was arduous, and he knew that only a dictatorship
would enable him to consolidate power. Lenin knew the
Bolsheviks could not reach power through laws, elections and
consensus, but only through force. Like a tiger, he waited
for the precise moment when he could pounce, for he knew
power was never given, but always taken.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Flight to Finland

In June 1917, an uprising took place against the government
installed by the March revolution.Lenin had done all he could to indoctrinate the Russian
workers, but their numbers were small compared to the
Russian population as a whole. He had not been involved with
the events of March, and he felt the new uprising would be
the vehicle to power. He had, however, serious reservations.
The crowds were by his own admission ignorant and
undisciplined. Would he risk the future of his organization
by depending on an incoherent mob? Lenin opted, against his
better judgement, to throw himself, his party, and his
resources into this second revoluton.This fateful decision to join a revolution that quickly
failed has been obscured and ignored by communist
historians. Although Lenin played an essential role in its
development, Trotsky twisted this historical fact with a
subterfuge:"Lenin," wrote Trotsky, "was sick and had lived in a Finnish
country house since June 19. Neither on this day nor on the
following days did he go to Petrograd." (Trotsky, The
Russian Revolution, vol. II, p. 124)The assumption that Lenin would miss getting involved with
unprofessional revolutionaries was reasonable. His mind was
too methodical for such an adventure. What is puzzling,
however, is that Russia's master revolutionary could really
have been absent from Petrograd during such critical days.
Since early June the Russian capital had been in ferment,
and on June 18, 1917 a huge demonstration had gathered and
united both workers and soldiers. The demonstration was felt
throughout Russia."The June 18 demonstration," wrote Trotsky, "made an immense
impression on the participants. The masses saw that
Bolshevism was becoming a force; the fence-sitters were
drawn to it. We were compelled to act on this."The next few days saw violent clashes between anarchists,
Communists and anti-Communists. Prisoners were released from
jails and soldiers mutinied. The bourgeois revolutionaries,
fearing for their lives, had finally turned against the
Bolsheviks. Lenin himself denounced, on June 25, 1917 "the
savage screams of rage against the Bolsheviks."

While all this was going on, Lenin, according to Trotsky,
was convalescing in Finland. No one ever explained the
nature of Lenin's illness. Soviet archives have produced
nothing on this question. While every aspect of Lenin's
activities has been religiously recorded, there is no
explanation as to the sudden illness which forced him to
recuperate abroad. The Communist version, or rather
non-version, of this critical time in Lenin's history is
more than puzzling, it is false.There is no doubt that Lenin was in Finland on June 21, 1917
for reasons which were then unknown, but had nothing to do
with the state of his physical health. There is also no
doubt that on July 4, 1917, the day the second revolution
erupted, Lenin was in Petrograd. Far from ill, he harangued
the crowds in the pouring rain from the balcony of the
ballerina Kshesinskaya's palace, urging the masses to storm
the Taurid palace.Thus Lenin was leading the revolution on July 4 in the
Russian capital. But what had Lenin done in Finland between
June 29 and July 3, 1917?

Lenin's stay in Finland happened to coincide with Brusilov's
offensive. It was precisely when 23 Russian divisions were
hurled into a final offensive against the Germans that Lenin
left for Finland. There, he would meet with German agents,
from whom he would receive new funds in exchange for
sabotaging the Russian advance. The fact of German financial
aid to Lenin has never been refuted. Before boarding the
German train Lenin had of his own admission run out of
funds. The Germans had invested in him for services
rendered.Now, the Brusilov offensive provided the opportunity for the
Germans to find out whether Lenin had been a good
investment. Could he sabotage Brusilov? Lenin needed and got
more money in Finland. When he returned to Petrograd on July
4, 1917 he finally gave the orders to take to the
streets-which he had totally forbidden previously. Lenin
knew how much it cost to run a successful revolution, and he
did not want an anarchist rabble ruining his chances. He
wanted a dictatorship and now he had the funds to impose it.Lenin ordered his people to join the ranks of the anti-war
protesters. Public opinion, however, was still concerned
with Russia's moral obligation to "fight the enemy."
Feelings ran high when Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev
screamed in the Duma that the army had to lay down its arms.
They were called anti-Russian Jews out to destroy the
Russian fatherland. Lenin was publicly accused of being a
German agent.Trotsky himself wrote: "In the shops, in the street,
everybody was talking about German money." Angry Russians
stormed the headquarters of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda
and ransacked it from top to bottom. Next came the party
headquarters, and Lenin took flight.

Lenin and Trotsky became dirty words. Two weeks before they
had been hailed as heroes of the proletariat. The crowds
chanted: "Death to the Jews, death to the Bolsheviks."How Lenin, with his cold calculating mind, could have let
himself be involved in such a miscalculation almost defies
comprehension. In fact, in their eagerness to sabotage
Brusilov's offensive, the Germans had pressured Lenin to act
against his own best judgement. They had also underestimated
Russian reactions to an attempt to stab a fighting army in
the back. As demoralized and fed up as they were with the
war, the Russian people were not ready for the betrayal of
their soldiers and their fatherland.Lenin's revolution of July 4, 1917 failed. He was exiled and
his collaborators were jailed. The Germans, lacking
sensitivity in their evaluation of the Russian psyche, had
been too hasty.Brusilov, the one military hero, had been beaten by the
treason of the Bolsheviks, who lost him Lemberg and Riga and
Lenin was a German agent: such was the Russian perception of
Lenin's attempted revolution.The half-socialist government, yesterday so despised by all,
experienced a sudden turn of fortune. Kerensky was not only
absolved of the Brusilov catastrophe but was made prime
minister. Peace had escaped the Germans and revolution had
escaped the Bolsheviks. Autumn was coming, and the future
was gloomy for both the Kaiser and Lenin.

CHAPTER XL

Red October

For the preceding twenty years Lenin's theory of revolution
had been inflexible:Revolution, particularly in a country where the
possibilities for political action are non-existent, is not
everybody's business. Revolution must be organized and led
by professional revolutionaries, the vanguard of the working
classes who are trained in every aspect of clandestine
struggle. The party constitutes this vanguard. It must be
organized in relation to its insurrectional vocation and to
external conditions of instability: that is to say, the
party must be totally centralized, authoritarian and
rejecting any concession to verbalism.When he departed from his theory on July 4, 1917 he must
have rued the day and pondered Karl Marx's observation: "I
have sown dragons and I have reaped fleas."For Lenin was in no way a democrat; he was an Establishment
elitist. He considered universal suffrage a stupidity, at
best a temporary tool. He believed people were by nature
incapable of political realism, let alone of planning a
revolutionary future. The best brain had to impose its will
on the masses. The proletariat must be led for its own good,
with or without its consent. Lenin never tired of stating
that he was the man for the task: his mind and his
organizing ability were superior to all others. He often
likened the masses to bleating sheep, but he himself was
more of the nature of a lion.

The failed July revolution sent Lenin back to square one.
Next time there would be no more popular outbusts. The
professional revolutionaries would never again allow the
crowds to lead them: they would infiltrate them and take
control of them. Iron discipline would prevail in every
detail and would be enforced ruthlessly.

The situation was, however, quite different from the one he
had encountered on his April return, when he was greeted
with flowers. Lenin was discredited and hated as a traitor
by the Russians. The Allies, who had realized that he had the potential to pull Russia out of the
war, were targeting him, and the International was publicly
denouncing him.Yet Lenin would master this impossible situation within two
months.

Old Prince Lvov had on July 5 handed over the presidency to
Kerensky. Russia was still in the war but not on the
offensive. The front had been broken and the Germans
controlled the road to Petrograd from Riga.Kerensky, the socialist favored by the Allies, delivered
endless speeches and promises. In fact he was presiding over
growing anarchy. Hunger was constantly spreading; looting
was commonplace. While mobs seized lands and homes, killing
their occupants, Kerensky concentrated his efforts on
reducing working hours.The Russian army was falling apart for lack of food and
supplies. The only ammunition reaching the front was
manufactured in Japan and could not be used with Russian
weapons.It was at this time that General Kornilov, a war hero who
had escaped a German prisoner of war camp, decided to "save
the nation from catastrophe" by taking power. What Lenin had
attempted from the left, he would attempt from the right.He had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian
armies in July 1917. He was supported by a part of the
bourgeoisie, but in words only. True to form, the bourgeois
vision was mean and petty: they would whisper words of
support for Kornilov but never at the expense of their own
purses.On August 27 Kornilov launched a coup d'etat without
financial support. Supported by disenchanted workers,
various patriotic elements, and three Cossack divisions, he
marched toward Petrograd along the railway lines.Kerensky, panicked, frantically cried for help in all
directions. The Bolshevik leaders he had jailed joined in
the mournful chorus. Trotsky feared his end was near, Stalin
lamented: "The Soviets have now reached the end of a
tormented agony" (Souvarine, p. 159). Lenin, who had escaped
to Finland, stated: "Now they are going to put us, all of
us, before the firing squad, they never had a better time to
do it." Lenin understood timing: in a similar case he would
not have missed the opportunity to shoot his opponents, as
he later would demonstrate.

Kerensky had jailed the Bolsheviks because he feared their
ability to overthrow him. Now as Kornilov approached he saw
them as saviors: he would release them, he would arm them,
and they would do battle with Kornilov. The Bolsheviks could
not believe their eyes: the man who had jailed them was
putting them back in the saddle.

Lenin followed everything from Finland. He organized thirty
thousand men to block Kornilov's access to Petrograd.
Kerensky requisitioned all food and supplies, to hand them
over to the Bolsheviks. Kornilov met the well-armed,
well-disciplined and well-fed Bolsheviks with soldiers
exhausted by days of forced marching and months of
privation. His appeal to the bourgeois for money to feed his
men had yielded nothing.The lack of supplies forced Kornilov to give up and witness
the disintegration of his forces.Kerensky was saved but he could no longer return the
Bolshevik tiger to its cage. Lenin explained his position:
"If the party saved Kerensky from a military coup it was
only with the aim of disposing of him in a more definitive
way." Only Kerensky's mercantile mentality and sudden burst
of panic could have led him to believe otherwise.Lenin had learned his lesson well: the crowd would be
inflamed by professional agitators and insurrection would be
carried out like a commando raid. Never again in Russia
would people be let loose to play at revolution. Now the
Bolsheviks were armed: guns had given them power. Lenin
summed it up: "The time has come."Now that Kornilov's coup had been averted, Kerensky asked
the Bolsheviks to put down their arms, only to be laughed
at. Trotsky became ruler of the Petrograd Soviet and Lenin
moved in for the kill.

Lenin organized what he considered a prerequisite for a
successful revolution: "Creation of an insurrectional
headquarters, occupation of strategic locations, and
specific revolutionary operations." All his instructions
were given from his hide-out in Finland. Fearing
assassination, he would not return to Petrograd until the
eve of the insurrection, when everything had been put into
place according to his orders.Lenin still had to deal with those Communists who wanted a
left-wing coalition with other parties as a way to ensure
victory. He was determined to use them for all they were
worth and at the same time to ignore what he regarded as
half-baked and treasonable ideas. He wooed them by speaking
their language: "The party will guarantee the peaceful
development of the revolution, the peaceful election of
delegates by the people, a peaceful policy of consensus
among all left-wing parties within the Soviets, the
experimentation with other parties, programs, the sharing of
power among parties" (Souvarine, p. 162). While the
left-wingers were lulled into supporting the Soviets by such
a soothing vision, Lenin worked feverishly for the
implementation of his real policy.Acquiring power and never letting it go was Lenin's aim. He
made clear that to his henchmen: "Assuming power is a matter
of insurrection. Political programs will appear only after
power has been seized. It would be disastrous to wait for the doubtful elections of November 7.
People have the right and the duty to settle matters by
force, not by votes. Any revolutionary who would let such a
moment escape would be guilty of the highest of crimes."When the time came, Lenin advised what to do with the
left-wing compromisers: "We must wage an implacable war
against them and expel them mercilessly from all
revolutionary organizations."Lenin was only interested in results. He hired the best
professional agitators of the day because he knew they would
always outperform the hot-heads. If Lenin were operating
today, he would use banks, computers and the news media as
the most efficient ways of imposing his will.Gorky was amazed at Lenin's manipulative power, at his utter
lack of scruples, and his contempt for people: "Lenin is no
towering leader but a cynical manipulator without any regard
for honor or people's welfare or human lives." In fact,
Lenin had no feelings toward humanity because the only thing
that mattered to him was the revolution. People were to be
used merely as tools to serve Lenin's revolutionary
abstractions. His all- encompassing mind worked out in
detail the implementation of his revolutionary theories.
Indifferent to money or the trappings of power, he
understood the substance and chemistry of power.

Kerensky had given the Bolsheviks power in the form of arms
and money for the purpose of opposing a right-wing
revolution. Lenin used the power to consolidate and expand.
The Russian army was targeted for further infiltration.
Lenin brought the cell system, whereby secret agents were
positioned at every decision-making level of the armed
forces, to a science.There were 200,000 soldiers, whom Kerensky had kept away
from the front, around Petrograd. Lenin infiltrated the
whole corps in no time. The Petrograd garrison became
Lenin's own private army. Discipline was ruthlessly
enforced, and political indoctrination never let up. After
years of neglect and disorder, the army had found someone
with the iron will to regiment and motivate them. The men
may not have understood Lenin's ideology but they respected
his drive and single-mindedness of purpose.

Kerensky had no understanding of what Lenin was about. He
regarded the Bolshevik leader as just another politician
peddling issues and promises as a way to get votes. He never
for one second thought that Lenin could have meant a word he
said. To Kerensky it was all an act, part of the haggling in
the bazaar of politics. When the show was over, they would
all sit down and share the spoils of power. Kerensky was
quite confident that his haggling ability would get the better of the Bolsheviks:
they would receive some power but would share it with
Kerensky and his cronies.Five days before the insurrection that would sweep him out
of power Kerensky pondered confidently: "Bolshevism is
falling apart and we have nothing to fear, Russia is with
us." Kerensky saw that very few people actually supported
Bolshevism, but he had ignored Lenin's recruitment of forty
thousand shock troops among workers and disaffected soldiers
in the Petrograd area.Kerensky disposed of a military and police force seventy
times superior to Lenin's shock troops, later known as the
Red Guards. More than ten million soldiers were nominally
under Kerensky's control, but in fact they were totally
disorganized and demoralized, unusable for any purpose. As
far as the hundred and forty million Russians, they were too
hungry to be for anybody. The chaos brought by years of
inept government had turned the population into an inert
mass. Out of millions of soldiers and people Kerensky could
in fact rely on barely 10,000 men!Trotsky wrote: "We were certainly weak but we Bolsheviks
were facing an enemy far more numerous but also much weaker
than us. Numbers have nothing to do with politics." History
abounds in similar cases where a small, well-organized
number of people has overwhelmed huge crowds.Lenin knew the necessity of extreme prudence and absolute
secrecy. He remembered that his small and simple central
committee had been infiltrated by three tsarist undercover
agents. He was distrusted by everyone, even his closest
allies, like Kamenev and Zinoviev.Lenin gave orders, but never discussed or revealed his whole
plan. Since he was a supreme tactician and strategist he
needed neither debate nor approval from other members of the
Soviets. To do so would have meant security leaks and the
ruination of any plan. Lenin believed the greater the
surprise, the greater the victory. Consultation and the
seeking of consensus were always made to hide and protect
his real intent. Only when his purpose had been achieved
would he inform his Soviet colleagues of what had happened.
By then it was a fait accompli, history.

The last days of the Kerensky government ground out slowly
and silently. It rained heavily. Every day at noon,
Petrograd was shaken by a blast from the old cannon of the
fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.On October 23, 1917 Lenin, in complete disguise, moved to a
hide-out in the workers' district of Viborg. The area was
under virtual Red Guard control.Everything was ready. On the night of the twenty-fourth the
Central Committee was convened secretly. A single man,
carrying Lenin's orders, gave each member precise
instructions as to what to do, hour by hour.

The General Congress of Soviets was to be held the following
day. Lenin had decided not to wait for its opinion, which
could have been negative, and took steps to thwart potential
trouble: "At the first attempt of doubtful elements [those
who would treat with Kerensky] to take to the streets, you
will wipe these criminals from the face of the earth."Lenin organized the insurrection meticulously: the town was
divided into zones under the authority of militia leaders.
Each objective was clearly defined, as were the forces
required to reach it. Everyone received weapons suitable to
the role he had been assigned. Eighty machine-gun
emplacements were ready to open fire. Two specially selected
members of the Central Committee would direct the seizure of
the railways, the post office, and the telephone and
telegraphic exchanges the minute the insurrection order was
given. Food supplies had been organized for all the
insurrectionists.The insurrection headquarters were located at the Smolny
palace, but Lenin had also installed another high command at
the St. Peter and St. Paul fortress, ready to take over if
for any reason the first high command ceased to function.

While Lenin's iron-fisted preparations were being carried
out, Kerensky was still playing politics as usual. In the
dead of night, the Bolsheviks seized all of Petrograd's
strategic centers: communications, rail stations, power
stations, food and weapons depots, all printing plants and
the state bank.The next morning General Kovinkov informed Kerensky: "The
situation in Petrograd is terrible. There are no riots in
the streets, but that is only because the Bolsheviks have
taken control of them. Public buildings have been occupied
and people are being arrested systematically. Security
guards have abandoned their posts. The Bolsheviks also have
a list of public officials to be arrested."Due to a delay by the naval units, the army headquarters and
the Winter Palace had not yet been taken over. Because the
insurrection was conducted with military precision Petrograd
was relatively quiet. Lenin refused to appear in public
until all public buildings were under his control. At last
the naval detachment arrived and landed from the Neva river.
The cruiser Aurora lay off the Winter Palace, ready for
combat. An ultimatum for surrender was given. There was no
response. During the course of an hour and a half the Aurora
fired thirty-six times, with only two hits. The damage was
negligible, but as Lenin pointed out, the noise was enough
to get results without destroying the building.The thousand defenders of the palace capitulated while the
cabinet ministers stayed seated around the council room
table. They surrendered without any resistance. Their
leader, Kerensky, had disappeared in the morning. Dressed as a women, he was spirited away in the
official car of the United States embassy.The bombardment had no impact on Petrograd's daily routine.
People continued to go to the theaters, which remained open
during the entire insurrection. The ruble was worthless;
people paid with an egg to get in.As soon as his men were in control of the Winter Palace
Lenin took off his wig and heavy glasses and for the first
time appeared at the Congress of Soviets. After four months
of hiding out, Lenin had planned and achieved a revolution
from his Finnish lair. It was his masterpiece.His sudden re-appearance had a prodigious effect. He was
hailed and acclaimed interminably. He had forced everybody's
hand, and he had won. In politics winning is everything.
Lenin owed it all to his secret tactics. The revolutions of
the spring and summer, on the other hand, had failed for
lack of a dominating mind.As the applause died down Lenin announced that the war would
stop immediately and that all land was forthwith
confiscated. He created an "iron government" run by
"people's commissars." All knee-jerk democrats were
excluded. Lenin demanded that a new Central Executive
Committee be elected. The Bolsheviks were in full control of
the government, and the absolute masters of Russia.What would Marxism bring the Russian people? Within the
first eighteen months eight and a half million would be
executed or starved to death, as many dead as in four years
of world war. This massive slaughter did not trouble the
Bolshevik leaders. Trotsky's answer to critics was:
"Melancholy pondering [on the slaughter] did not prevent
people from breeding."

On the night of the coup-October 25, 1917 old style-Lenin
announced that he would cease hostilities with Germany.
Seven months after the tsar's downfall Germany would finally
be able to close down its eastern front. Although Lenin and
the Kaiser had coincidental interests, both were in
actuality playing with fire. Lenin needed peace but had no
intention of helping the Germans. The capitalist Reich was a
prime enemy, to be brought down by violent revolution.Lenin was not going to do anything to strengthen Germany if
he could help it The kaiser for his part knew that Lenin had
always wanted to overthrow his regime, and kept an uneasy
watch on Bolshevik developments.

CHAPTER XLI

Brest-Litovsk

Lenin's telegram to the Germans for a cessation of
hostilities illustrates his Machiavellian turn of mind. He
proposed a three-month truce only to delay a formal peace
treaty. This would leave Germany without the benefits of a
clear-cut agreement.The arrangement would give Lenin time to consolidate
Communist rule and to prepare Russia as a base to export
revolution without freeing the Germans to concentrate on
winning the war in the West. Lenin believed the German
workers would follow the Bolshevik example and rise up
against the Kaiser. While German-Soviet negotiations were
going on he launched a "peace campaign" addressed to all
belligerents, "a peace without territorial gains or
indemnities." While he appealed to the various governments,
his chief appeal was directly to the people.Lenin was well aware that the people have no say in such
matters. They leave for war, make war and come back from war
with closed eyes and sealed lips. The governments, which are
a front for a handful of conspirators-the Poincarés, the
Sazonovs, the Churchills, the Sonninos, the Houses, the
Bethmann-Hollwegs-are the only ones to launch wars. But
Lenin was already cultivating his image as a man of
conciliation.The manipulators of governments were at the time perplexed
by Lenin's obviously outrageous suggestion. They had
railroaded their own countries into war for the express
purpose of acquiring loot and land, and thus dismissed
Lenin's proposals as the posturing of a madman. The only
head of state to respond favorably was Wilson. With patent
naiveté Wilson believed he could convert Lenin to his own
Fourteen Points for peace. He sent Lenin enthusiastic
congratulations which must have made the Soviet leader laugh
contemptuously.Wilson's telegram dated March 1918 addressed to the Congress
of Soviets read:"Let me take the opportunity on the occasion of this Soviet
gathering to express the sincere sympathy felt by the
American people for the Russian People. The American people
is heartily with the Russian people in its determination to
be forever free of autocratic government and to be master of
its own destiny."

Four days later on March 15, 1918 Lenin replied: "The
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic takes the
opportunity on the occasion of President Wilson's message to
express to all the world's people its firm belief that the
happy day is not far off when the working masses of all
countries will free themselves from the yoke of capitalism
and will establish a socialist state."Lenin's Foreign Minister Zinoviev did not hide his contempt
for the American president when he told the United States
ambassador in Moscow: "With our words we have slapped
President Wilson in the face."Ironically, Wilson's capitalist phraseology was virtually
the same as Lenin's anti-capitalist pronouncements. As early
as January 8, 1918 Wilson had written the gist of his famous
Fourteen Points. He had orginally wanted to establish them
before entering the war. The main points were: "The right of
self-determination for all people," "the abolition of secret
diplomacy," "freedom of the seas" and "peace without
annexations or indemnities."How the British and their allies would allow people
self-determination when they already had disposed of their
freedom in secret treaties was another question.

Lenin had accurately assessed all the governments bound by
secret treaties: "The war is waged by slave traders haggling
over cattle." In fact the Allies were haggling over the
Rhineland, Tyrol, Sudetenland, Prussia, Carpathia, Dalmatia,
Smyrna, Armenia, Mosul, Baghdad and Jerusalem, as well as
other territories scattered all over the world.For several years millions of people had been secretely
swapped without their knowledge. Wilson wanted commitments
in favor of self- determination, but it was too late; the
bids and the deals were closed, as the president would
realize a year later in Versailles.All peace negotiations would fail on this account. Lenin
knew very well there was not the slightest chance of
convincing the Allies of renouncing their booty of land and
people.His cynical intelligence understood the usefulness as well
as the uselessness of Wilson's peace demands. He would go
along, propose an unrealistic peace, since he knew the
allies would never accept it. Lenin calculated that the
upheaval caused by the allied remapping of the world would
open the way to communism.Lenin added a new dimension to traditional imperialism, and
to such ethnic enmities as that between Slav and Teuton: the
introduction of Communist imperialism. Unlike conventional
imperialists, who sought to grab a specific piece of land,
Communist imperialism sought to conquer the entire world. It
was a basic difference that would transform the world. From
Lenin on, age-old quarrels only played into the hands of the
Communists. Only cooperation would save nations with a
common history and culture.

***

In Petrograd Lenin had no choice but to bring peace to the
masses very quickly. His October victory was still fragile,
and was geographically and numerically limited. Kerensky was
still in Russia, in the town of Gatshina, only a few miles
from Petrograd. He still had a force of loyalist troops and
appeared hostile to Lenin. In the countryside resistance to
Communism was on the rise.Lenin admitted, "Everything is hanging by a thread." The
thread was a German one. If he let go of it he would be
swept out of power as surely as the tsar or Kerensky.Germany was no longer going to put up with Lenin's
ambivalence, and sent him an ultimatum. Lenin realized he
could no longer string the Germans along, particularly since
his own survival was threatened. On November 23, 1917 Lenin
and Trotsky were forced to sue for peace and to begin
negotiations with Germany over the terms a month later at
Brest- Litovsk.Both sides would gain and lose. Germany would win by having
imposed its armistice demands but Lenin would win by
cunningly prolonging the negotiations for four months.

The Bolshevik delegates ranged from the grotesque to the
sly: a convicted murderess back from Siberia, Comrade
Bizenko, and a drunken laborer who picked his teeth with his
fork were put forth as the people's representatives,
dictating the people's will. Behind these front men operated
three of the most important Bolsheviks, the real
negotiators. They were Abramovich, Rosenfeld and Bronstein,
who were now going respectively by the names of Joffe,
Kamenev, and Trotsky. They turned the negotiations into a
Marx Brothers routine that left the Germans bewildered.At the sight of the drunkard, the murderess and three
devious Jews, General Ludendorff asked in amazement: "How
can we negotiate with such people?" Ludendorff would have
liked to march on to Petrograd and Moscow and wipe out the
Bolshevik nests, but that would necessitate maintaining a
large German army in Russia, and Germany needed all its
forces on the Western front.At last Germany and Austria agreed in principle, in order to
end the dialectical antics, to let the people living within
German-occupied parts of Russia decide of their own fate by
way of a plebiscite. That was the trio's first demand.
Another demand was made to the effect that Germany should
evacuate the territories and let the Bolsheviks organize the
plebiscite. The Germans, who had observed how on October 25, 1917 less than
10 per cent of the population had imposed Leninist
dictatorship on the rest of the country, refused to
entertain this notion. Negotiations were thus interrupted
for ten days, from December 28, 1917 to January 7, 1918, and
the Bolsheviks gained vital time.These delaying tactics helped Lenin's foreign policy but did
little to help him on the home front. In fact he was losing
ground despite massive repression at every level. The
working masses had elected only 175 Bolshevik members out of
717 members of the Constituent Assembly. It was a stinging
rebuff which Lenin was not about to tolerate.On January 18, 1918 the new assembly met to take their seats
for the inaugural session at the Taurid Palace. As they
arrived they were threatened and harassed by the Bolshevik
police. The whole district was under a state of siege, with
machine guns positioned on every roof top. The next day at
5:40 in the morning the Constituent Assembly was summarily
dissolved, after only a few hours' existence.Souvarine reported what happened a few hours later: "The
workers organized a peaceful march to demonstrate sympathy
with the men they had elected. They carried the red flag.
Suddenly, without any warning, they were mowed down by
machine-gun fire." 21 workers fell dead on the pavement.
Thus did Lenin treat the proletariat in its very first
popular demonstration against his regime.Such was the plebiscite, enforced by machine-guns, which
Trotsky wanted at Brest-Litovsk, and which the Germans were
not prepared to grant.

Trotsky invented new ways to delay the negotiations. On
January 22, 1918 he engineered, through the central
committee of the Bolshevik Party, a novel proposition: the
Soviets would not sign a peace treaty. They would declare
peace unilaterally and demobilize.Trotsky calculated this temporizing would give the German
Marxists time to organize in Germany. Professional agitators
had had a certain success in promoting the slogan "Peace
without annexations" among the German workers.The most aggressive agents of Bolshevism in Germany were
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, both co-religionists of
Trotsky- Bronstein, Kamenev-Rosenfeld, and Joffe-Abramovich.Luxemburg and Liebknecht had orders to exert maximum
pressure on the German negotiators at Brest-Litovsk to force
them to accept Trotsky's demands. Steelworkers' unions were
enlisted to spearhead public demonstrations. Soon, five
hundred thousand workers would join the protests. It took
all of Ludendorff's skill to defuse a potentially disastrous situation and put the men back to work within a week.
Ludendorff thus experienced the subversive actions of alien
agents within the borders of Germany, which he called "so
many daggers stabbing our soldiers in the back."

The German High Command could no longer tolerate Bolshevik
intrusion in its internal affairs.At that time occurred a fortuitous event for Germany: the
immense land of Ukraine, rich in the wheat so critically
needed in Austria and Germany, proclaimed itself an
independent republic. A Ukrainian delegation came to
Brest-Litovsk to sign a separate treaty of peace and
collaboration with Germany. The richest part of the land
would escape the Soviet grasp.On February 9, 1918 at two o'clock in the morning, the
German-Austrian-Ukrainian peace was signed. Ukraine would
immediately deliver a million tons of wheat to Austria.When the Bolsheviks attacked the Ukrainian capital of Kiev,
German- Ukrainian collaboration became an alliance, which
would free German troops from Southern Russia.

The treaty had thwarted Trotsky's blackmail. In a state of
rage he stormed out of Brest-Litovsk on the first train to
Petrograd. Without a peace treaty, the German troops were
ordered to advance toward Petrograd. The Germans met no
resistance and their offensive was swift: "It is the most
comical war I have ever experienced," said General Hoffman
who led his troops by train. "An infantry detatchment is
loaded, along with machine guns and a mortar, on a train
riding to the next station. The Bolsheviks are taken
prisoner and the station is captured. Then a new detachment
is brought up by rail and so it goes." At that rate the
Germans stood to reach Petrograd within two weeks.Lenin realized that his delaying tactics at Brest-Litovsk
had not paid off. In fact, they had backfired. The
possibility of utter defeat for his Communist revolution was
real. This time, he knew, he would have nowhere to run.Lenin reorganized his priorities. He was prepared to agree
to almost anything as long as he could retain some part of
Russia as a Communist base.The French Embassy, desperately trying to keep him in the
war, was offering divisions and millions in gold. The
Central Committee agreed to accept "the help of the French
imperialist bandits against the bandits of German
imperialism."

The Kaiser's "bandits" were by now half way to Petrograd,
just 100 miles away from Lenin's stronghold. Trotsky, who
had wanted to put up a fight, was finally won over to
Lenin's viewpoint and provided him with the crucial vote
required to sign a peace treaty.On February 26, 1918 the Bolshevik delegation appeared once
more at Brest-Litovsk. This time there were no delaying
tactics. The Soviets hardly looked at the documents. On
March 3, 1918 they signed a peace treaty with Germany. For
Lenin the choice had been peace or extinction. "Yes,"
declared Lenin, "this peace is our most horrendous defeat;
yes, this peace is a major humiliation for Soviet power. But
we are just not in a position to force history."

***

Germany's gamble on Lenin had paid off. Without him Russia
would still be at war. Furthermore, Lenin had been
neutralized, just as his revolutionary doctrine was about to
spread like a typhus epidemic.Little was left of the Russian empire: the Baltic countries,
Poland, Byelorussia, Ukraine, Crimea and Tiflis were in
German hands. The Soviet empire had shrunk to the size of an
indigent province.Romania, Russia's ally, had been defeated by General von
Mackensen. It capitulated five days after Brest-Litovsk.
Besides losing the Dobrudja, Romania had to lease its
oil-wells to Austria and Germany for a period of ninety
years as well as give Germany an option on all meat, corn
and feedstock for the following eight years.For Germany the satisfaction of winning on the Eastern front
was marred by the landing of hundreds of thousands of
American troops on the coast of Brittany and Bordeaux. But
the British blockade was of little import now that Germany
had access to all the food and raw material at their
door-step. Germany was poised to win the war in March of
1918: plentiful supplies were assured, Bolshevism had been
pushed back into an icy corner of Russia, and the wealth of
Russia was at Germany's disposal. Only the intervention of
the United States government threatened German victory.

Yet, the Reich had to make up for lost time with a
tremendous thrust westward. The Germans were led by the
greatest military genius of World War I, General Ludendorff,
the right-hand man of Marshal von Hindenburg. The German war
machine was at the peak of its efficiency: in less than
three months 600,000 soldiers were brought back from the
Eastern front, along with all their equipment, to reinforce
German positions in Champagne and Artois.Ludendorff was methodically massing the entire German army
for the final round.

CHAPTER XLII

Ludendorff at the Gates

“Where was France at the end of 1917?" This was the question
André Tardieu would ask in his book, Peace. Tardieu had been
a relentless propagandist for Pan-Slavism at the beginning
of the war and would later become president of the Council
of Ministers of France.Tardieu answered his own question unequivocally:The reverse of April, 1917 created among a number of people
a desire for immediate peace. There was mutiny at the front,
defeatism in the rear lines, and treason on the march.
Romania had delivered its wheat and oil to the enemy.
Lenin's rise to power had sent hundreds of German battalions
against us. American war preparations were particularly
slow. Our armies were immobilized by lack of gasoline. The
British had suffered the disaster of March, 1918 and the
French had suffered an equal disaster at the Chemin des
Dames. The Germans were on the Marne and Paris was being
bombed.Confidence in the French head of government was low and it
was said in the House that he was losing the war. On September 29, 1919
Clemenceau publicly revealed a bitter exchange he had had with British
Prime Minister Lloyd George:Lloyd George: "Do you recognize that without the British
navy you could not have carried on the war?"Clemenceau: "Yes."American oil shipments to France prevented a collapse of the
war effort. Tardieu, sent by Clemenceau to the United
States, has given some telling figures:"If I had not succeeded at the beginning of 1918 in
obtaining from President Wilson the massive help which
raised our [petroleum] reserves from 47,000 tons on February
1 to 237,000 tons by April 30, the two battles, one
defensive and the other offensive, which decided victory
would not have been won."How would Ludendorff first win, then lose these battles,
which the French would have lost without American oil and
the British navy?

First-hand witnesses like Clemenceau and his military aide,
General Mordacq, offered the best record of France's near collapse
and Germany's brush with victory. General Mordacq's record
of events, on a daily basis, has been acknowledged as factual by most historians.On March 21, 1918, at nine in the morning, the British were
under attack at St. Quentin. For five hours they had been relentlessly
pounded by Ludendorff's ninety divisions. Then General
Huttier, who the previous year had conquered Riga, threw in
the Eighteenth German Army. Within hours the British front
had collapsed and the British retreated in panic. The Allied front line had been breached.General von Marwitz's Second Army and General von Billow's
Sixteenth followed suit. "Within forty-eight hours," wrote Renouvin,
"the British were retreating in a rout."Clemenceau was informed by the military on April 25 that
[British] General Haig would have to capitulate before two weeks and
that the French army would be lucky if it could do the same.
(Clemenceau, Greatness and Misery of Victory, p. 22)"France is in supreme danger. The British are running for
the North Sea to get home. Haig has no more reserve troops and England
cannot provide men for immediate combat duty" (Clemenceau, p. 25).The Germans had opened up a major breach exactly at the
junction of the British and French armies, which were split in two. Both
could think only of saving their own hides. The British
priority was to cover their escape routes, namely the
Channel ports of the North Sea, and the French strove to
defend Paris.Marshal Foch himself said: "Ludendorff's divisions have just
swung open both halves of the door."

French ministers met in haste with the generals in Doullens.
French president Poincaré was brought in for appearance's
sake, but now it was Clemenceau who was in command. He
offered the British reinforcements on the condition they
would accept General Foch as supreme commander of all Allied
forces. The British objected at first, but events would soon
change their minds. Ludendorff fanned out his troops from
south-west to north-west. Huttier reached Montdidier. The
Allies had a brief respite when some of Huttier's divisions
arrived late from the Russian front.The Allied losses were enormous. 90,000 French and British
soldiers were taken prisoner.On April 3, 1918 the British were forced to accept Foch's
leadership.Their acceptance was only tactical, and only for the purpose
of securing more French troops to cover their retreat.Foch's actual recognition as "Commanding General of Allied
Forces" only came on April 17, 1918, when the British were hit by
Ludendorff's second offensive.The second offensive began on April 8, 1918 between
Armentières and La Bassée. The Sixth German Army's
thirty-six divisions crossed the river Lys, and annihilated
two Portuguese divisions which had bogged down in the mud of
Flanders. The Germans seized Kemmelberg, the highest hill of
the region, on April 25, 1918. This was a ploy to draw
French divisions away from the main front. After the Allies
fell into the trap, Ludendorff then applied maximum pressure
against the weakened Allied front.While Ludendorff prepared for the next thrust, he had to
deal with the scarcity of munitions and supplies. Austrian
and German soldiers had to live on a ration of 34 grams of
meat, 14 grams of fat and 165 grams of bread per day. Supply
convoys were critically short of gas and horses. Yet the
Germans still managed to deliver two major consecutive blows
against the British.Clemenceau wrote: "I just saw one of the last British
contingents. Its sorry state was proof that our excellent
ally was on its last legs." (Clemenceau p. 47)At the conference of Abbeville on May 2, 1918 Foch was just
as alarmed: "The last enemy offensive brought losses of men
and materiel out of all proportion to the losses of the last
three years. British infantry suffered greater casualties
than they ever have before. The French suffered similar
losses and it is inevitable that worse is to come."Clemenceau was stunned when the British decided to cut their
losses and let go of nine divisions. The loss of 200,000 men
in March, 1918 was more than they could stand. The move
almost triggered a fist fight between Lloyd George and
Clemenceau.Foch admitted: "The outcome of the war now depends on the
success of an enemy offensive at certain locations." Both
Britain and France were demoralized. The French Socialist
boss Merrheim was already conceding defeat: "We are in the
position of losers."Even Tardieu, the flamboyant war-monger, had grown gloomy:
"General Gough's British army broken and thrown back on
Amiens. The March 23 German bombing of Paris and the rupture
of the Anglo-French front brought us back to the worst hours
of 1914."

Ludendorff concentrated his third offensive against the
French. The shock was such that only the redeployment of
French troops from Flanders saved France from collapse. The
battle took place at Chemin des Dames and soon became a bloodbath. Bodies piled up in mountains:
422,000 French soldiers were killed, almost a third of
France's casualties for the entire war.On May 27, 1918 the Kronprinz - the German Crown
prince - ordered thirty divisions to take the offensive along a thirty-mile
front. The objective was to penetrate French lines to a
depth of fifteen miles and reach their munition and supplies
depots.The offensive was successful beyond expectations: "After the
Chemin des Dames catastrophe, the rupture of the French
front, our troops have been thrown back to the Marne river."
(Tardieu, Paix, p. 46)The French lost another 160,000 men. The Germans took 50,000
prisoners. On May 29 Soissons fell and on May 31 the Germans
took Dormans and Chateau-Thierry after crossing the Marne.
Ludendorff was within an hour's drive of Paris.

The most important witness to this debacle was General
Mordacq, who reported directly to Clemenceau:

May 27, 1918: Chemin des Dames, supposedly an impregnable
fortress, fell without resistance at the first German
thrust. The bridges of the Aisne river were taken and to
this day we were still trying to find out how.May 28: Fisme fell and the Germans reached Soissons after
taking a considerable number of prisoners. There is great
emotion in Paris.May 29 and 30: The Germans take Soissons, cross the Arlette
river and reach the Marne on the 30th.May 31, June 1: The Germans control the Marne from Dormans
to Chateau-Thierry.

The German offensive had advanced three times further than
expected by Ludendorff himself. It took incredible French
efforts to stem the tide.General Mordacq concluded: "During the battle of the Chemin
des Dames, the Allies lost 60,000 prisoners, 700 cannon,
2000 machine guns, a large amount of artillery and air force
materiel, major depots of munitions, supplies and food. The
railway, so vital to supply Châlons from Paris, was no
longer usable."It was a disaster. The general did not even mention the
enormous number of dead and wounded.

***

As if that weren't enough the Germans had launched a fourth
offensive in the direction of Compiègne. Here again General
Mordacq has left some invaluable notes:May 28: General Duchesne visits the Belleau headquarters. He
is in command of the Sixth Army and he has retreated to
Ouchy-le-Château. The Germans are advancing and we have nothing to oppose them.
Duchesne is complaining that since the beginning of the
offensive he has not seen any great leader emerging.We are sleeping the night at Provins, headquarters of
General Pétain, who criticizes Foch for having sent the
reserves to the north of France and to the Somme River. He
has been totally opposed to it. He said the divisions were
badly deployed and the artillery had failed.On May 29 we just escaped the Germans on our way to
Père-en-Tar-denois. At Fresne, General Degoutte informs us
that divisions had been thrown into battle without any
artillery support. It is a tragic sight to see the general
poring over tattered maps while couriers on motorcycles keep
arriving announcing the advance of the enemy. I left him
knowing I would never see him again. It is one of the most
heart-rending memories I have of this war.We are returning to Paris. The situation is confused. The
House of Deputies is in a panic.On June 14, 1918 the House of Deputies was crawling with
cowards and conspirators. There were motions to punish those
responsible for the debacle. Clemenceau fought like a tiger
to save his defeated generals. "If I had given way a single
minute," he said, "the whole High Command would have gone." And General Foch would have been the first to
go. Said Clemenceau: "I do not boast when I say I saved
him."Without this irascible old man of seventy-six years, often
rude and with a cloudy political past, France would very
likely have collapsed by mid-June of 1918. As with all
drowning democracies, it took a strong man to save France.
Clemenceau was that strong man, tireless and intractable.Former German Chancellor Prince von Bülow wrote: "As in the
days of the Convention, leaders emerged to handle the
crisis." Clemenceau, with a scarf wrapped around his neck, a
rumpled old hat on his head and a walrus moustache, ran from crisis to crisis, firing the
incompetents and raising the morale of the exhausted and
dispirited soldiers.

***

Germany did not have such an asset. Chancellor
Bethmann-Hollweg was a cultivated man but out of his depth
in politics. Sad and uninspiring, he had muddled through blunder after blunder. As early as 1914,
he had lost all credibility and was unable to conduct
serious negotiations.The kaiser fired him in July, 1917 and a new chancellor,
George Michaelis, was appointed. The new minister proved
himself totally incompetent and only lasted three months.
His successor was Count von Hertling, well-meaning but also
inept. He was a sickly academic and a priest was always on
call to give him the last rites. Hertling somehow survived
politically for twelve months. He was then replaced by
Prince Max of Baden, an amiable man of wholly liberal thinking, who was
overwhelmed by the position and resigned three months later.

None of these men were a match for the formidable
Clemenceau. They dissipated German military gains with
turgid politics. Clemenceau, on the other hand, was
thundering his way out of defeat:"I am presenting myself to you," he roared to French
deputies, "with only one thought: total war. All defeatists
will be court martialed. There will be no more peace
campaigns or demonstrations, there will be no more treason,
no more half-treason. My program is the same everywhere: I
wage war at home, I wage war outside. I will continue the
war until the last minute, because the last minute will be
ours."Germany might have been imperial, but somehow traitors were
tolerated. While Clemenceau turned the firing squad on the
slightest traitor, German traitors were left to undermine
national resolve. Socialist congressman declared with
impunity: "We will sabotage the German army in order to
start world revolution." Socialist congressman Strobel
declared that a German victory would be "contrary to
socialist interests."Former Chancellor von Bülow wrote: "There were many traitors
to the nation among our socialists, while they were none
among the French, the British, Italian or Belgian
socialists."Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the Communist Jewish
agitators who were instigating riots in Berlin for the
purpose of overthrowing the German government at the end of
the war, announced: "The revolution will start as soon as
the military situation worsens."The imperial government not only did not punish the traitors
but it did nothing to back or encourage those socialists who
were loyal and patriotic. Communist saboteurs were allowed
to disrupt war factories and push their propaganda on the
workers, a situation which no other country tolerated.Von Bülow noted the difference:French law punished to the utmost propagators of "pacifism
and defeatism." The editor of the socialist and pacifist
paper Bonnet Rouge was arrested and put to death a few days
later. Interior Minister Malvy was fired and exiled in
disgrace because he was accused of being soft on pacifism.
Former foreign Minister Caillaux was jailed as a defeatist
and barely escaped with his life. The Egyptian banker Bolo
Pasha was arrested for "corruption" with Germany and for
pacifism. The charge was groundless but he was nevertheless
courtmartialed and executed twenty-four hours later at
Vincennes.Pompous declarations about liberty and fraternity just made
Clemenceau laugh:"Woe to the weak. Shun all who would put you to sleep. We
are at the height of an implacable war of domination."Clemenceau committed excesses and injustices but they were
based on the unshakable conviction that nothing could stand in the way of
the war effort.Clemenceau's ruthlessness came just in time. Ludendorff was
almost at the gates of Paris and the French authorities were
preparing to flee south just as in 1914. Clemenceau had somehow singlehandedly
managed to stem the panic and re-establish order.Despite its outstanding success on the battlefront, Germany
was still short of victory. Hindenburg had hundreds of
thousand of troops in Russia and Ukraine, which were now
essential if Germany was to win the war. The troops were
left there to ensure the delivery of wheat to Austria and
Germany. Forty other divisions had also been forced to
remain between Kiev and Riga in case Lenin should sudddenly
break the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Ludendorff desperately needed these divisions; his
military genius could not offset their absence forever.

CHAPTER XLIII

14 Points and an Armistice

In 1918 the United States government landed 2,082,000
soldiers on the continent of Europe. That was double the
number of the entire German army on the Russian front. In
January only 195,000 Americans had landed but six months
later the number swelled to 1,200,000.In addition to men, the United States poured in materiel and
food. Overnight the British and the French were being
replenished with whatever they had lost, or whatever they
needed.In 1917 American bank loans to the Allies had accounted for
95 per cent of United States exports to Europe. The Allied
imports were enormous: five billion tons of food, five
billion tons of supplies, and a billion and a half tons of
steel.

Ludendorff was aware of the massive American influx but
calculated that he could still outmaneuver the enemy. When
Admiral von Hintze, the Kaiser's envoy, asked him whether he
could defeat the enemy totally Ludendorff answered:
"Categorically yes."Within three months Ludendorff had overwhelmed the Allies on
three separate occasions with 130 divisions, while he still
had 77 in reserve. For the final thrust he would deploy two
million men between Reims and the Argonne river.In France a quiet soldier was waiting for him: General
Pétain, who was later to become marshal and head of state.
Pétain was called "the victor of Verdun" because for six
months he had held the German army in check in the city of
Verdun.While Foch was an aggressive general, Pétain was primarily a
defensive strategist. He was careful to keep casualities to
a minimum. He had noticed how other French generals had
tried to hold out in front-line positions only to have their
men massacred. He chose to duplicate Hindenburg's strategy.
He would secretly abandon his forward positions and build up
formidable defenses in the rear. As Pétain knew, Ludendorff
would no longer be covered by his artillery once he reached
the reinforced rear lines.

On July 15, 1918 Ludendorff attacked Pétain with 47 of his
207 divisions. He overran the first lines with the greatest
ease, but his heavy artillery had pounded empty terrain.
Pétain's artillery was swiftly wheeled back. Pétain's guns
met Ludendorff's First and Third Armies with millions of 75
mm shells. At first Ludendorff fell into the trap. His
troops advanced three miles and crossed the Marne river, but
he stopped them going any further.

Since the debacle of Château-Thierry Foch realized he had to
organize a massive counterattack. In that spirit he sent no
major reinforcements to Pétain's defensive positions. Foch
ran the risk of annihilation but he had decided more out of
stubborness than skill to employ his offensive strategy. On
July 18, 1918 he ordered General Mangin to make a frontal
attack. It was on that day that the German High Command
would make its only major error of the whole war: it
underestimated the potential of tanks designed for assault.It is an irony of history that in 1940 and 1941 the German
Reich would rout the armies of its opponents all over
Europe, thanks to the tanks of the panzer divisions. But in
1917 the German High Command had not yet been convinced of
the efficacy of tanks. The British and the French had failed
in their first tank offensives, losing half their armor in a
hail of artillery fire. In 1918, however, the Allies had
built much improved versions. The Allies sent thousands of
them, in a continuous wave, until a breach of the Ludendorff
front was effected.This time German fire power was not able to stop the flow of
new tanks. Mangin advanced thirty miles deep into the German
lines and took twelve thousand prisoners in one day. The
German supply lines were overrun as well.Despite this reverse Ludendorff managed to maintain order
and discipline. He organized an orderly redeployment behind
Fismes and established a new German front on August 2, 1918
near the river Vesle.The setback was not a major disaster but for the first time
the Germans had lost the initiative. Hindenburg was
confident: "Five times during the war I've had to pull back
my troops and I always ended up beating the enemy. Why
shouldn't I succeed a sixth time?"Ludendorff was also optimistic about his prospects: "The
German army will be able to take the initiative again."
Ludendorff still had 205 divisions at his disposal. His
soldiers were battle-tested and had always displayed the
highest bravery and discipline. The Allies conceded they did
not have the man-power to match such an enormous and
well-organized force.The lack of Allied man-power would soon be remedied by an
influx of 1,145,000 American soldiers. By July 1918 the
United States had sent 27 divisions to France. Nineteen of
them were combat ready and the rest could be sent to the
front within four months.

On July 27 Clemenceau sent a telegram to General Pershing:
"Cordial congratulations for the creation of the First American Army.
History awaits you, you will not fail it."

On August 7, 1918 Foch was elevated to Marshal of France.
The next day he stealthily moved his troops towards Amiens.
A thick fog veiled his maneuvers. The Germans were surprised
by the attack, particularly the number of tanks involved,
and were forced to retreat another ten miles. The Allies now
controlled the road from Amiens to Roye.Ludendorff conceded: "This is a black day for the German
Army." He would wait another three days for a complete
report to evaluate Germany's chances of victory: "We must face facts and figures. We are
at the limit of our strength, the war must end."

***

Ludendorff had said the definitive word. Peace was no longer
a wish: it was a necessity. Germany would have to negotiate
a peace and agree to compromises. Its bargaining power would
be lessened, but would still carry some weight. Germany had
lost a battle but its forces were still in France, while
none of the Allied armies were in Germany. Ludendorff had in
mind a peace in which the status quo ante bellum, borders and all,
would be restored.Since October 1917 many leaders of the West had become
concerned at the rise of Communism. Lenin had stated that
the Bolshevik revolution would sweep the world, and the
intrusion of Communist agitators was becoming ever more
evident. The Allies were faced with choosing between a
policy of conciliation to meet a universal threat or the old
policy of secret treaties, expansionism, colonialism and
revenge. The odds were slim that they would opt for
conciliation. They had not wanted to hear or talk of peace
when they were losing on the battlefield year after year.
Now that they had experienced some success the possibility of peace
seemed even more remote.Chancellor Hertling had little understanding of Allied
intentions. On September 3, 1918 he told his ministers: "We
must say to our enemies: you can see for yourselves that you
cannot beat us, but we are ready, as we have been on many
occasions before, to conclude an honorable peace." His offer
was greeted with derision by the British and the French.
They had decided to end the conflict on the battlefield and
to crush Germany.After a lull in the fighting the Allies took the offensive
on August 20 and advanced on the Ailette and Cambrai. Hindenburg and
Ludendorff were forced to retreat and establish a new front.

For Germany there was yet hope of bringing back its
divisions from Russia. If Communism was gaining influence
across the world, it was not faring so well in Russia
itself. Lenin was increasingly challenged by nationalist
forces, anti-Bolshevik armies and other hostile elements,
which were constantly increasing. In desperation he decided
to sign an accord of cooperation with Germany to free his
hands and deal with his internal enemies. The accord allowed
for the return of a half a million German soldiers to the
Western front. But it would take three months to move them
and by then it might be too late. The American forces had
joined the front and were proving excellent soldiers.
Nevertheless, in mid-September Germany, though weakened, was
certainly not defeated.Tardieu noted: "By September 28, 1918 the enemy had lost
most of the ground it had won from March to June but there
are still 68 divisions in reserve, representing more than
one million men. They may be weakened, but so are the
Allies."

***

The war continued to inflict massive casualties on both
sides. The Kaiser kept repeating: "We must catch the right
moment to settle with the enemy."But the time never came. Within three weeks German's
fortunes turned markedly downwards. Her allies Bulgaria and
Austria were defeated, and Turkey capitulated. Germany was
now alone in the face of vastly superior forces. Ludendorff
showed great heroism, but he just didn't have the numbers.
St. Quentin, Roulers and Lille fell and Ludendorff retreated
to the Siegfried line. The Turkish and Bulgarian defections
and the warning that Austria would soon capitulate prompted
Ludendorff to send a telegram to the German High Command on
September 21: "We should make contact with the United
States."On October 1, 1918 Ludendorff, somewhat agitated, summoned
two liaison officers from the Berlin Chancery to his
headquarters. He gave them the following message: "Would you
please transmit a pressing demand regarding the immediate
dispatching of our peace offer. The troops are holding out
today but one cannot predict what will happen tomorrow."Later Ludendorff sent a second message: "Our situation is
still honorable. An enemy breakthrough, however, can occur
at any time, in which case our peace offer would come at the
worst time. I have the feeling I am gambling. There is the
likelihood that at any time and at any place a division can
fail in its duty."In fact no German division ever failed in its duty. Soldiers
and officers alike stood their ground. They waded knee-deep
in mud in my native valley of the Semois and as a young boy
I recall witnessing the unshakable German devotion to duty.
Sedan remained German right until the day of the armistice.On October 25, 1918 British Marshal Haig confessed to Foch
and Pershing that his troops were tired out and the enemy
remained extremely tough: "We are exhausted. The units need
to be re-organized. Germany is not militarily broken. In the
past weeks German armies have retreated while fighting very
bravely and in the best order."Haig's observation was born out by the facts. On September
20 Ludendorff still had 68 divisions in reserve. In the last
hour of the war seven were still available, while 139 were
on combat duty. Tardieu agreed: "The vigor of the German
resistance in critical circumstances was evident until
armistice day." (Peace, p. 83).A few days before the armistice the French military thought
they would have to spend another winter at the front. Foch
told the House just twelve days before Compiegne: "I am not
in a position and no one is in a position to give you an
exact date. The war could last three months, maybe four or
five, who knows?"Lloyd George also watched the casualties: "Right now each of
our armies is losing more men than in any other week during
the first four years of the war."The war had yielded no victors. Both sides were tired and
bloodied.Churchill himself, who was no friend of Germany, admitted
publicly that only the great qualities of the German people
could have enabled them to maintain a struggle against three
quarters of the world. After 1500 days and nights of
intensive combat Germany was, at the beginning of 1918 still
fighting the Allies well outside its own territory.

In October 1918 Germany declared its willingness to cease
hostilities on the basis of Wilson's fourteen points. The
Kaiser had, through third parties, already informed Wilson
that Germany would evacuate France and Belgium without
conditions. The Kaiser's offer had stood since August 8,
1918, but remained unanswered by the Wilson administration.
It would take another 100,000 dead before Wilson
acknowledged the German appeal.Ludendorff had advised an end to hostilities, however when
he saw the Allies had ignored the German appeal, he
reported: "The German army is still strong enough to contain
the enemy for months. It can win localized battles and
infleict heavy casualties on the Allies.Marshal Hindenburg likewise told the Reich chancellor on
October 3, 1918: "Although my position is becoming more
critical by the day the German army remains solid and continues to resist all Allied
attacks."Unlike Poincaré who, far from the trenches, screamed for
more blood, Hindenburg was a deeply compassionate man: "Each
day lost costs the lives of thousands of good men." The old
marshal also felt the gravity of Communist subversion inside
Germany and its link with Petrograd. The Communists were
waiting for the defeat of the German army to launch an
uprising. Already German supply lines were being infiltrated
by Red agitators. It was reminiscent of St. Petersburg in
March 1917.

***

Although the Soviets had publicly stated their aim to
communize the entire world only Churchill, among all the
Allies, took the threat seriously:"The Bolsheviks represent an international conception of
human affairs which is totally alien and hostile to all our
ideas of civilization." (World Crisis, vol. IV, p. 18)After two months of ignoring the German peace appeals,
Wilson finally replied on October 8, 1918. He asked
questions which had already been answered by the Germans in
their first appeal: "Does the German government accept the
Fourteen Points in their entirety? Will the German
government evacuate all occupied territories immediately?
Does the German government speak on behalf of the
authorities who have waged war until now?"On October 11, 1918 the German Reich replied. Germany agreed
to everything: "The new government approved by absolute
majority speaks in the name of the German people."On October 14 Wilson sent a second note demanding the
destruction of all German military power and the
transformation of German political institutions. William II
knew what it meant: "This aims squarely at the removal of
the monarchy."Despite Ludendorff's strong opposition (he resigned in
October 26), the government, headed by Prince von Baden,
gave in to all demands "in the name of the German people."On October 28, 1918 Wilson sent a third note demanding an
armistice whereby "it would be impossible for Germany to
take up arms." The armistice and peace, Wilson cabled, could
only be negotiated with "representatives of the German
people and not with those who have ruled the people until
now." Once more the German government agreed.When Ludendorff protested on behalf of the Germany army, the
new vice-chancellor, Payer, replied curtly: "I know nothing
of military honor, I am just a wicked bourgeois, just a
civilian."Such talk made the German socialists feel that their time
was coming at last. "The socialists," wrote historian Marc
Ferro, "were calling the tune. They were in power and were
waiting for Chancellor von Baden to obtain Wilhelm II's abdication. They pressured him to resign,
implying that a revolution would follow."The predictions of revolution were not idle talk. On
November 3, 1918 the first mutinies would occur in Kiel.

Before resigning Ludendorff had stated on October 25: "If
the armyholds out another four weeks, and winter sets in, we will be
out of the woods."Undersecretary Solf then asked point blank:"If a refusal (to comply with Wilson's demands) breaks the
negotiations, will you take the responsibility for it?""Yes," replied Ludendorff.Hindenburg also opposed Wilson's demands:"It would be better to keep on fighting and save our honor."The Allies realized they could still break their teeth on
the German bone. They were bent on a war of attrition. For
his part, Wilson was learning, after Germany had agreed to
all his demands, that it was in his own camp that peace was
not wanted. The Allies had no time for his kind of peace, in
which the British would no longer rule the seas, and where
French, Italian,Greek and central European politicians could not tear at
Germany like jackals after the war.On October 3, 1918 Wilson decided to ask the Allies "whether
they were disposed to conclude peace under the conditions
and principles already known." Wilson was of course
referring to his Fourteen Points, which particularly
stressed "peace without annexations."The points had been read in Congress on January 8, 1918:1. "Open conventions openly arrived at." For the previous
three years theAllies had signed, in the utmost secrecy, a series of
conventions for the purpose of sharing the spoils of war.2. "Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas." Britain
had not the slightest willingness to abide by such a point.3. "Abolition of as many economic barriers as possible and
the establishment of commercial conditions for all nations."
The Frenchgovernment wanted just the opposite in order to keep Germany
down forever.4. "Arms in each country will be reduced to a minimum." The
Allies wanted to keep their superiority of arms but wanted Germany
totally disarmed.5. Concerning colonies: "The interests of the populations
concerned will carry the same weight as colonial claims."
The Allies had already confiscated German colonies for themselves and had no
intention of asking the natives what they thought about it.
6. "Evacuation of all Russian territory." The Allies agreed
to this point. Lenin, who had been contained in a narrow
corner of Russia, was now unleashed to spread communism
throughout the world.7. "Belgium must be evacuated and restored." Everybody
agreed.8. "The wrongs caused to France by Prussia in 1871 in
relation to Alsace- Lorraine must be righted." This point
was subject to multiple interpretations.9. "A rectification of Italian borders must be effected in
accordance with the principle of nationality." This point was negated by the
secret Treaty of London signed by Britain, France and Italy in 1915. The
treaty ignored the principle of nationality, since it
promised the Italians South Tyrol, including 240,000 German inhabitants.10. "Autonomous development of the people of Austria and
Hungary." In 1919 the two countries would be encircled by a
band of states controlled by the Allies. This remapping of
Central Europe was done without the consent of its millions
of German, Hungarian and Slovak inhabitants.11. "International guarantees for the independence and
integrity of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro." This point was
vague and did nothing to solve long-standing historical issues.12. Concerning the nations under Turkish rule, mostly Arab:
"Full security and the right to independent development without
any interference." This point was illusory. In a secret
treaty with France the British had given themselves the lion's share of the Middle
East which included territories, populations and oil.
Furthermore, the British Establishment had promised the Arab country of Palestine to
the Jews of the world. The Palestinians were of course never
consulted.13. "An independent Polish state will be created which will
comprise territories inhabited by Polish populations and
which will be given free access to the sea." The word
"access" was understood by the Allies as meaning
"annexation" and the point failed to mention that the
territories "inhabited by Polish populations" were also
inhabited by more than tenmillion non-Polish people.14. "The establishment of a general association of nations."
The Allies regarded this point as just another of Wilson's grand ideas
of no relevance or future.

Should the Germans have refused to go along with Wilson's
Fourteen Points?Like most other Europeans, they had no knowledge of Wilson's
physical and psychological state. A man debilitated by illness can
often be harmful to others: he is betrayed and irritated by
his body. His character is affected and so is his range of actions.

Wilson had been sick and ailing since childhood. His eyes,
his stomach, his bowels and his nervous system were affected
by illness. His biographer, Bullitt, wrote: "At seventy years of age he was suffering
from gastric problems, migraines, nervous disorders and stomach troubles"
(President Wilson, p. 264)Freud later diagnosed him as suffering from "typical nervousdepression" and noted his paranoiac reflexes, particularly
in his belief that he was the reincarnated Christ.Although he did not set out to cause trouble, his absolute
belief that he could do no wrong boded ill for humanity. He
believed his higher principles would change human nature and
the world but his physical and mental condition made him unaware that he was being mainpulated by
intriguers and conspirators, both inside and outside
America.The First World War was above all an imperialist war. The
objectives were strictly material and territorial. No one
was fighting, as in 1940, for ideals or a new concept of world order, but to quench a
thirst for more trade, more people and more land.This greed for gain would soon submerge Wilson in
Versailles, where his hopes for a better world would be forever dashed. He may
have realized then that politics is the graveyard of good
intentions.

The Germans, lacking British political cynicism, had decided
to go along with Wilson's Fourteen Points. They were not
concerned that some conditions were overly severe because they believed their
near victory in the summer of 1918 would ensure them an
honorable peace. They had been impressed by certain conciliatory statements Wilson had made
concerning Germany:"We are in a way jealous of German greatness and there is
nothing in our program to thwart it."Wilson had also taken a number of public stands on Germany:

We know now that we are not the enemy of the German people
and they are not ours. They did not start nor wish this
horrible conflict. We did not want to be drawn into it
either but we feel that we are in a way fighting for the
German people, and one day they will realize it, as much as
for ourselves.

A most moving declaration. The Germans, however, would have
placed less reliance on it if they had heard Wilson's
previous comments, this time speaking as a true politician, to the effect that: "We must
not attach too much importance to promises."What would remain of Wilson's promises a year later? The
Allies viewed the Fourteen Points as a threat to the gains
they had already made. For diplomatic reasons they had not publicly opposed them but
they were far from agreeing to them.Wilson meant to impose them, one way or another. If the
Allies failed to recognize the sacredness of his principles
he would bring them to reason by financial pressure:
"Britain and France," he wrote to House, "do not have the
same ideas as we have concerning peace. After the war we
will be able to force them to think like us, because among
other things, they will be in our hands financially."
(Bullitt, President Wilson, p. 306, 319).The Allies, who were still unsure of winning the war, went
through the motions of placating Wilson. Privately they were
seething, and feared a premature armistice would undermine
their latest battlefield gains. They needed American troops
to ensure total victory on their terms.

Wilson's messianic liberalism made for a poor performance in
public relations and diplomacy. He treated opposition to his
ideas with disbelief and contempt: unbelievers would be
financially arm-twisted or bypassed. This attitude led him
to negotiate the conditions of the November 11 armistice
without even consulting the various pressure groups
controlling the politics of America. He ignored the
traditional American way of seeking consensus through
consultation and bi-partisan compromise. The Republicans
were not invited to be associated with his Fourteen Points,
despite Wilson's demands being presented as a national plan
and policy.Wilson would go to Versailles embroiled in a bitter and
sordid political fight. He would not be the spokesman of a
united America; he would pursue his own policy and visions.
Further, his ill-advised attempt to impose ten candidates of
his own choice in an upcoming senatorial election backfired:
eight of the ten Wilson-picked candidates lost by a
landslide. It was a stinging rebuff that did little to
enhance his prestige or credibility on the eve of his
departure for France.

Apart from losing face at home and abroad, Wilson also lost
control of the Senate. Without Senate approval Wilson lacked
the power to commit America to an international treaty such
as that of Versailles. Everything he would sign would be at
the mercy of a hostile Congress. Congress would indeed
reject the treaty which Wilson had signed at Versailles.The armistice with Germany was signed on November 11, 1918.
The treaty negotiations would start in January 1919, but
they were doomed to failure from the outset. Each
participant observed the usual diplomatic niceties, but
before the first session ever started there was scarcely a
single issue generally agreed on by the Allies. Wilson, who had been so bent on imposing his point of view,
no longer had a majority in his own country.In a rare flash of realism Wilson expressed doubts as to the
results of the Versailles Treaty: "This will cost us
thousands of lives and billions of dollars, just to end in
an infamous peace which will condemn us to another and worse
war than this one." (Bullitt, President Wilson, p. 297).Behind the lights and applause, which were dazzling a
gullible public, the greatest failure in history was taking
shape.

The Scoundrels
of Versailles

CHAPTER XLIV

The Armistice: a Fraud

Let us pray to God our sovereign will now have courage to
die on the battlefront," declared Count Augustus von
Eulenberg, one of the Kaiser's closest aides.The all-powerful Kaiser, however, who had been the god of
war for years, was melting like butter during the last days
of the war. He knew it was the end, and he had decided to
retire to a comfortable life of exile at the castle of
Aberemonge. He would not see a German uniform until 22 years
later, when the Waffen SS spearheaded the conquest of
Holland.The German army, despite its courage and discipline, was
slowly losing ground. But it was not the Allies who were
responsible. The German army was undermined behind its own
lines at home. Since 1917, Marxist agitators and agents had,
under Lenin's direction, conducted a relentless campaign of
subversion and sabotage.The new Soviet Embassy in Berlin was the center of Communist
subversion in Germany. Some of Lenin's agents had been
arrested and found in possession of documents and money
provided by the embassy. Considerable funds were remitted to
the Jewish managers of Communist insurrection: Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. More than 70010 of Communist
leaders in Russia were Jews and practically all the
Communist bosses who would appear across Europe in the
following weeks would also be Jews.While the German army fought with patriotic fervor, alien
subversives were tearing their homeland apart. They took
control of Germany's greatest seaports, sabotaged German
warships and spread terror among the population. Officers
were murdered and arsenals blown up in Kiel and Lübeck. The
terror reached Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Altona and Hamburg.
Marxist thugs were organized into "Iron Brigades" and sent
by the trainloads to all strategic points of Germany, where
munitions and arms were seized. They took control of railway
stations, bridges and road intersections.Berlin was now falling prey to Bolshevik mayhem, where rival
Marxist gangs would fight it out for the privilege of
destroying Germany. Soon Berlin was at the mercy of ruthless
"people's commissars" and so was the rest of Germany.

It was against this background of Marxist terror that German
politicians decided to negotiate the end of the war. A
frightened envoy called Erzberger was sent to Foch to
receive a document demanding Germany's unconditional
surrender and to be signed forthwith. Erzberger had
difficulty in contacting Chancellor von Baden because the
"people's commissars" in Berlin had fired him from his job.
The head of the German government had been stripped of all
power when Erzberger was summoned to sign a document written
in French. After much waiting, Erzberger received a telegram
from Berlin: "The German government accepts the armistice
conditions presented on November 8." The telegram was signed
"Reichskanzler Schluss." Foch was bewildered by the name
"Schluss":"Who is this Chancellor Schluss? Who is this gentleman?
Neither our High Command nor our government has ever heard
of him."Foch was glaring at Erzberger with distrust. For a while the
German envoy was at a loss for words because he also had no
knowledge of Chancellor Schluss.He might have smiled during a less momentous occasion but
composed himself to defuse a misunderstanding that was
turning nasty. "Schluss," he explained, "is not the new
chancellor. He is neither a congressman nor any kind of
politician. `Schluss' is simply a German word meaning
`period.' " In fact the telegram sent was sent anonymously
by someone who dictated the "period" to signify the end of
the message. That was People's Commissar Ebert, who was no
chancellor.Berlin was without a chancellor, a secretary of state and an
emperor. A terrorist rabble had occupied government
buildings by force in total illegality.Peace had started with a fraud. The telegram agreeing to
Allied conditions was in the name of non-existent chancellor
and was therefore legally worthless.

The Allies were concerned over the situation in Germany. The
Marxist revolution could easily spread to Belgium and
France. Indeed, Lenin had planned to use Germany as his base
for communizing the world. The armistice treaty was drafted
to punish Germany to the utmost and quench the Allies'
thirst for vengeance, but its immediate result was to save
Communism and make it into a force strong enough to threaten
the world.The treaty ordered the Germans to withdraw immediately from
the Baltic states, Ukraine and Crimea. The German presence
had kept the Communist virus bottled up in Petrograd. The
removal of German troops would open the way for Lenin to
invade these countries. Self-interest alone would have
dictated that the Allies use the Germans as a bulwark
against the Red tide, but they were so overwhelmed by hatred
for Germany they had become blind to the consequences of
their action.

The armistice was in fact removing practically all of
Germany's defense means: 5,000 cannon, 3,000 trench mortars,
25,000 machine guns had to be surrendered. In addition, the
Allies confiscated 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 railroad
cars, as well as the entire German air force and navy.Three million German soldiers suffering from exhaustion and
years of privation had to make their way home on foot. It
was an inhuman ordeal. Meanwhile, gangs of Jewish Communists
were unleashing a reign of terror in every city of Germany.
The bourgeoisie, paralyzed with fear, was hiding in its
cellars.Erzberger was still hoping that the Allies would eventually
come to their senses by the time of ratifying the peace
treaty. He was also encouraged that the armistice had been
concluded only after the acceptance by all parties of
Wilson's Fourteen points-guaranteeing a just peace.Would this undertaking be respected?European apprehension in the face of the Bolshevik
Revolution should have induced wisdom. But it was not to be.Clemenceau was after blood when he stated: "The day of
vengeance has arrived. Germany will wait in vain for us to
hesitate one minute."How did Clemenceau reconcile his statements with his
country's acceptance of Wilson's Fourteen Points: "There
will be no annexations, no reparations or indemnities of a
punitive nature"?

CHAPTER XLV

British Demagoguery

Strangely enough the ones who, even before the arrival of
delegates to the peace conference in Paris, were the
spokesmen for a policy of vengeance were not the French but
the British Establishment.More than any other country, Britain had taken great care to
ensure that the war would prove profitable to its trade and
imperialism. The British Establishment would allow nothing
to stand in the way of its greed for gain.In 1914 the British empire owned a quarter of the world. To
ensure Versailles would not upset its institutionalized
policy of pillage and piracy, the British imperialists had,
ahead of the event, stuck clever stickers on the spoils of
the German and Turkish colonial empires. Of particular
interest were the Middle East oil fields and German
possessions in Africa. London needed Tanganyika, an African
region of great strategic and economic importance for them,
to link its northern colonies of Egypt and Sudan to its
southern Africa lands, which they had fairly recently stolen
from the Boers. Long before the armistice, the British had
appropriated for themselves the German colonial empire as if
by divine right.The British empire now controlled 35,467,656 square
kilometers of the Earth's surface, 10 times more than it did
in the 18th century. It had also acquired what it had
striven for for three centuries: dominion of the seas. The
British simply confiscated the entire German navy and
merchant marine. All the German ships had been taken to
England at the base of Scapa Flow and were to be distributed
among the victors, who by Armistice Day included most of the
world's countries. The distribution was typically British:
70070 of the ships would go to Britain and the balance to
the rest of the world.The war had also well served the British policy of "divide
and rule" by which Britain reserved the right to foment
unrest and wars in Europe. It has always been an article of
faith for the British Establishment to stop any European
country from becoming too strong commercially or otherwise.
Germany had been a prime target of this policy because its
ships threatened to compete with British cartels and
monopolies. Germany was earmarked for destruction only
because it was successful. It joined a long list of
countries which at one time or another over the years found
themselves embroiled in wars and conflict against nations
backed by Britain.

The British Establishment had seen them as a threat, real or
imagined, and had immediately set their agencies in motion
to deal with the problem by fomenting wars. Britain had
always regarded Europe as a patchwork of alien entities to
be manipulated for the greater glory and wealth of the
British Establishment and had never considered itself as
part of Europe."England is only bound to Europe but it is not part of it,"
declared Churchill. British support for one country doing
its bidding was never longstanding. As soon as it had served
its purpose it was abruptly discarded.Friendship or loyalty were never a consideration.Lord Palmerston clearly explained British policy: "Great
Britain has nolasting friendship or enmity with anyone; it has only
permanent interests." Even Clemenceau remarked:Great Britain has never ceased to be an island defended by
the sea. Because of this it deems it necessary to multiply
the causes of discord among the people of the continent, to
ensure the peace of its conquests. Considerable means were
put at the disposal of this policy. Britain's European
policy has mostly consisted in keeping the people of Europe
in check: using some to check the others.On Armistice Day Britain had once more reached its goal: it
had eliminated its competitor by foul play.

Spain in it heyday had suffered a similar fate. Spanish
ships had opened up the New World, watched by a jaundiced
Britsh eye. Instead of exploring new worlds themselves, the
British unleashed a fleet of pirates on the unsuspecting
Spaniards. Pirates who stole the most gold, murdered the
most Spaniards and sunk the most galleons were automatically
knighted by her Britannic Majesty, and cut in on a
percentage of the booty. For 200 years the British
Establishment lived off the proceeds of their piracy against Spain.Napoleonic France was also under constant British attack for
its attempt to unify Europe. The British had favored Napoleon as a
revolutionary tearing France apart but when he became
emperor he had to go: a strong France could not be tolerated.During the entire 19th century Europe was kept in a constant
state of turmoil and wars, of which the only beneficiary was British
imperialism. November 11, 1918 marked the downfall of
Germany, the 1914 trade competitor of Great Britain. The British were quite vocal in
demanding reparations from a prostrate Germany, perhaps to
deflect attention from the fact they had already helped
themselves to the lion's share of Germanassets.Yet the British were not through with Germany. She was going
to be used to fuel the mills of British politics.

Lloyd George was facing elections and he decided to ride the wave of
enthusiasm created by the Allied victory over Germany. The British voters had
for the last four years been subjected to an orgy of anti-German propaganda and
Lloyd George thought the war hysteria had been squeezed for all it was worth. He
would appeal to the voters on the benefits his government had got out of the
war. Britain had already destroyed Germany and he saw no point and certainly no
profits in kicking a dead horse

The British Establishment was at that time eyeing France as
the next competitor to be knocked down. The French had lost
almost 2 million men during the war and they were thirsting
for vengeance and reparations. The war had been fought on their territory and they felt
entitled to the lion's share.Since the British lion had already taken care of that, Lloyd
George felt the French would prove obnoxious upon waking up
to find out there was nothing left to squeeze out of
Germany. They might even turn against the British with the
rage of a cheated partner. Furthermore, since the French
government had firmly implanted in its subjects the notion
that France was responsible for winning the war, the issue
of vengeance and reparations became an emotionally-charged national issue beyond the
scrutiny of knowledge or reason.Churchill was instructed to meet with Lloyd George in order
to develop some kind of bipartisan policy to deal with
likely French expectations and recriminations. The Establishment even contemplated helping
Germany to recover enough to create a counterweight to the
French.On April 11, Churchill dined with Lloyd George at 10 Downing
Street. Churchill narrated the event:We were along in the main hall under the gaze of Pitt, Fox
and Nelson. The greatness and magnitude of our victory
produced in us a feeling of lightness and detachment. Yet
our task was in no way terminated. My mind was shared
between apprehension for the future and a desire to help a
defeated enemy. We went on talking about the great qualities
of the German people, of the terrible struggle they had to
bear against three-quarters of the world, of the
impossibility of remaking Europe without German
participation. We thought at the time they were actually
dying of starvation. We thought famine and defeat would
slide the Teutonic population into the deadly abyss that had
already devoured Russia.I suggested we should, without waiting for any more news,
send to Hamburg half a dozen ships filled with food.
Although the armistice conditions were not to lift the
blockade until peace had been signed, the Allies had
promised to provide sufficient food and the prime minister
look upon my proposition favorably.Outside, the songs and the hurrahs of the crowd were
reaching our ears, like waves on the shore. But sentiments
of a differenct nature would soon prevail.

Churchill and Lloyd George waxed pompous on helping the
hungry in the comfortable club atmosphere of Downing Street.
These were noble thoughts which, however, were not meant for
public consumption but rather to be dissipated in the fumes
of after-diner cigars. Outside, the world of electioneering
and politicking had little time for highmindedness.A week after the dinner, Lloyd George was won over to the
idea of whipping up more anti-German hysteria as the best
way to win the election. British master propagandists had
demonstrated how effective their anti- German lies could be
both at home and abroad. For a politician like Lloyd George
it was nothing to change issues or policy. In August, 1914
he was a staunch opponent of the war. Then he changed his
mind in exchange for a cabinet post. Three years later had
had become prime minister of the pro- war party.
Anti-Germanism was a proven recipe for winning elections and
Lloyd George fully intended to use it. With a certain black
humor Churchill commented: "The war of the giants had ended;
the bickering of pygmies has started." (World Crisis, Vol.
4, p. 27.)British propaganda had portrayed Kaiser Wilhelm II as an
absolute monster who, alone, had wanted the war. The Kaiser
bugbear, Hun horror tales about atrocities and dastardly
sinkings of "innocent civilian ships" such as the
Lusitania
has been most profitable for British politicians. They were
once more waved in the face of the crowds. The voters had
been well conditioned for four years and responded
enthusiastically by sweeping Lloyd George and his coalition
government for another term.

The British Establishment thought it unwise to switch hate
hysteria from the Germans to the French too abruptly.
Although it had the utmost confidence in the voters'
proverbial lack of memory, it realized the electorate had
actually become addicted to anti-German hysteria. The crowd
demanded that the Kaiser and his Huns, who had allegedly
multilated Belgian children and shot Red Cross nurses, and
killed British subject should be hanged, and Hunland pay
forever for their ghastliness.A police report at the time read: "The same sentiments
dominate in all classes ... The Germans must pay for the
damages they have caused with their last cent, even if they
have to pay for a thousand years."Cabinet Minister Barnes was cheered by the crowds when he
cried out routinely: "The Kaiser must hang."Lloyd George was equally vehement and promised: "The emperor
of Germany will be judged and eventually put to death."

Churchill had long since jettisoned his temporary
magnanimity and had joined the bloodthirsty pack in demanding that the Kaiser be
put on trial and hanged. Even that did not satisfy the voters, who
insisted that "a punishment worse than death be guaranteed.Churchill noted: "Women displayed the most violence. All the
classes and all the parties in the town of Dundee demanded the
Kaiser's hanging. I was obliged to demand he be brought to
justice."

Hanging the Kaiser and bleeding Germany white might have
made the British electorate delirious but it did not make
economic sense. The use of free German labor would only
increase unemployement at home and would also deprive Germany of money to pay its enormous war debt.
It was really a matter of trying to pluck a plucked chicken.After the elections politicians soon forgot, privately at
least, all their blood-curdling promises and went back to
the business of money. Lloyd George commissioned British
economist John Maynard Keynes who came up with a maximum
figure of 2 billion pounds sterling for reparation. There
was such an outcry-the amount was deemed to be far too
low-that the commission's recommendations were quickly swept
into the dust bin.

Churchill still tried to convince his constituents of Dundee
that the figure of 2 billion pounds sterling "was reasonable
and sensible."He carefully addressed the voters:

The Germans must pay reparations [applause]; they must pay
large reparation [applause]. In 1870 they demanded large
reparations from France. We will make them pay 10 times more
[long applause]. Two hundred million pounds, that is to say
5 billion gold francs multiplied by 10; that makes 2 billion
pounds.

Churchill had thought he had sold the voters but soon
realized no one had bought his argument:

The next day they started taking a close look at my figures.
An arrogant telegram was sent to me from an important
chamber of commerce: "Haven't you forgotten a zero?" The
local newspapers were stridently screaming 12 billion, 15
billion! These figures were flying off the lips of men and
women who, only yesterday, were satisfied with 2 billion.Overwhelmed, Churchill beat a hasty retreat: "Well,
naturally, if we can get more ..."

Lloyd George knew the insanity of such demands but he was
not going to be outdone on the hustings, where he repeated
the famous statement: "We will squeeze the German lemon
until the pips squeak."He raised the figure to 24 billion pounds sterling, 12 times
more than he had been advised by economic experts Germany
could possibly pay."Yes," he proclaimed before a delirious crown, "they will
pay this to the last cent, even if we have to search their
pockets."In 1918 German pockets were more likely to be filled with
holes than cents. But the inflationary rhetoric had
propelled Lloyd George and his coalition to a landslide
victory with 8307o of the seats in the House of Commons. His
prime ministership was secured for several more years.
Churchill made another political somersault, jumped on Lloyd
George's bandwagon and was minister for war.

The triumph of demagoguery in Britain ensured the failure of
the Versailles Conference. No British minister was about to
lower the figure. It was accepted dogma, not only believed
by the English population, but also unanimously by the
French. Lloyd George tried to shed his electoral promises
the following month and on many later occasions, but always
without success. He was stuck with them for better or worse.

CHAPTER XLVI

The Morass of Paris

Lloyd George arrived in Paris at the beginning of January,
1919, flanked by a retinue of emirs, maharajahs and prime
ministers from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and all the other far-flung outposts
of the British empire. Clemenceau suspected "perfidious
Albion" had once more doublecrossed the French, and said as
much to Lloyd George: "The very next day after the armistice
I have found you to be the enemy of France."Lloyd George replied: "Well, isn't it our traditional
policy?"The altercation reflected British policy without
embellishment. France had replaced Germany as the enemy.

Although Clemenceau was able to establish that Britain was
the enemy, he was unable to see that only a reconciliation
with Germany prevented him from developing such a thought.
This ignorance was shared by many of his compatriots and was
always cleverly exploited by the British Establishment.Before 1914 most Frenchmen lived in total ignorance of all
their neighbors. They traveled little because they were
satisfied no country could match their own. The famous
author Charles Maurras had only once in his lifetime left
France, and that was to take, as a young man, a short train
trip to Brussels.Pierre Laval, a Cabinet minister 11 times, told me he had
also been in Belgium by train: "But I did not see anything
because my train was going to Berlin where I had been
invited by Streseman, and it was dark."Clemenceau knew so little about anything foreign he could
not distinguish between Dutch and Belgian currency. This
could be understandable coming from overseas visitors, but
France had lived next to these "foreigners" for more than
2,000 years.

Thus was post-war Europe poisoned by British perfidy and
French hatred and ignorance. Petty squabbles were the order
of the day.

It was such an environment that Wilson would reach Paris on
January 14, 1918. He bore his hallowed Fourteen Points as if
he had come down from Sinai with them. He was sure they
would illuminate the world. He was quite prophet-like about
it.For Clemenceau the Fourteen Points were just so much airy
nonsense. He would not say so publicly, however, and instead
set out the welcome mat for Wilson. He organized a favorable
press and arranged for French academician Lavedan to write:

We saw him in Illustration [a famous magazine], we have
admired him and our descendants will admire him. President
Wilson will appear in the poetry of the coming centuries
like Dante, whom he resembles in profile. The future
generations will see him leading, between the perils of this
infernal world, the Beatrice dressed in white which we call
peace. We salute in our hearts, in the temple of our
gatitude, this eternally memorable man. Hail President
Wilson, high priest of idealism.

Left-wing author Romain Roland was not about to be outpuffed
and threw in his own lofty encomium:Heir to Washington and Abraham Lincoln: convoke the Congress
of Humanity! Be the arbiter of all free people! And may the
future generations call thee the Reconciliator!

While incense was lavishly dispensed Clemenceau was
preparing to neutralize Wilson's points. Like the British,
he had come to resent American success. There was plain
jealousy and also a feeling that American growth would
create a new center of power. Both the British and
Clemenceau believed that their respective countries should
be the center of the world and disliked the idea of a new
contender.Allied anti-Americanism was really scandalous. The Entente
had railroaded America into a war that was none of her
business. The wheat and steel the "Allies" had received from
America saved them from defeat, and American soldiers saved
them from annihilation.

The "Allies" often charged that the United States was
obsessed with business, and undoubtedly American business
had benefited from the war. But after all, businessmen are
out to seize opportunities and to make a profit. No one had
forced the "Allies" to buy from America. The Germans would
have jumped at the chance had they not been blockaded.Clemenceau wrote: "America, for a relatively small loss of
lives, would materially benefit at our expense out of all
proportions" (Greatness and Misery, p. 158). In comparison
to French or German losses it may have been small, but it was 100,000
American men, dead in a war of no concern to them.Clemenceau also resented the fact he had been helped. It was
a matter pride; he would have liked to have won the war all
by himself.Apart from matters of pride, ignorance and ingratitude there
was also a fundamental difference of ideology. Clemenceau's
ideas of self- determination had little to do with Wilson's
Fourteen Points: "We must have the courage to say it: we did
not go into war with a program of liberators," he said.Before reaching Europe, Wilson had let known his misgivings
to his associates: "The men with whom we are going to
negotiate do not represent the opinion of their people."In fact few of the Versailles conventioneers represented
their own people. The latest Senate elections were a virtual
denial of the Americans' previous mandate for Wilson.
Clemenceau would, within a few months, be trounced in the
French presidential election. Venizelos had been thrown out
by his Greek people. Erzberger, the unfortunate German
signatory of the armistice, would be assassinated, a victim
of German outrage.The British were continuing their "divide and rule" policy.
The French, blinded by their hatred of Germany, were locked
in obscurantist policies. The Germans were treated as
pariahs. And there was in addition a horde of "creditor
nations" who had hopped on the war bandwagon against Germany
at the last minute and demanded their share of the spoils.Versailles was a hornets's nest of quarrelsom and conniving
mediocrities. Clemenceau called it "a peace full of
treacheries just like the ambushes of war." Churchill called
it "a squabble of pygmies," and at least on this matter both
were right.

CHAPTER XLVII

The Soviets in Germany

While 27 Allied countries sent their delegates to swell the
ranks of the "treacherous squabblers" at Versailles, Germany
was sinking into chaos. Soviet commissars had established a
reign of terror across Germany.Bavaria had been taken over by a bloodthirsty Communist just
out of jail. He was a Jew from Galicia who had turned
professional agitator for the Soviets. His hair and beard
were solid with grime because he never washed. His skin was
waxy, like death, and he always wore an oily beanie which
appeared fused to his skull. His name was Kurt Eisner."He was," wrote the French historian Benoist-Méchin, "one of
those hybrid figures that history seems to produce during
periods of chaos and political mayhem." (History of the
German Army, Vol. I, p. 270.)Paul Gentizon, the French author who witnessed the Bolshevik
terror in Munich, said: "Eisner was like an Oriental
warlock."Eisner had been involved with the theater business and was
adept in theatrics. He had somehow developed an
attention-catching oratory, both strident and nebulous. On
November 7, 1918, a meeting organized by the socialists
massed more than 100,000 people to celebrate the
revolutionary exploits in Kiel, Hamburg and Lubeck. Nothing
more than an outpouring of speeches was on the agenda.
Eisner appeared suddenly, backed by a vociferous group. He
was hoisted on the speakers' platform and burst out into
violent tirades. The crowd, who had endured four years of
hunger and suffering, responded to Eisner's rhetoric. He
whipped them up into a frenzy and led them into the streets,
with the help of trained professional agitators. Within
hours the Marxist-led mob had taken control of all
government buildings, railway stations, post offices and
factories. Munich had fallen.It was an incredible event. While Germany was heroically
holding out against the combined Allied and American
onslaught, a Jew (and convicted criminal) from Galicia was
sitting on the throne inside the royal palace of Bavaria. On
the same evening of November 7, 1918, he declared a
"republic," and unleashed his commissars to "mete out
justice." Fearing for his life, King Ludwig III fled with his family, in the
nick of time. Thus one of the most Christian and traditional
states in Germany had been overthrown in the course of a single night by an alien
thug.

Eisner appointed fellow Jews as ministers. A fanatical
Communist called Erich Mühsam, the Jewish commissar of the Red Guards,
declared Munich under "the dictatorship of the proletariat."
Eisner put him in charge of state security. The dictatorship's first act was to "break
diplomatic relations" with Berlin. Eisner then proclaimed
Germany's guilt in the war and proceeded to send the Allies
documents "establishing the culpability of the Reich." The
so-called documents were out-and-out forgeries invented by
Eisner and his cohorts. He then called on the Allies to
accept his "loyal oath and repentance."While Munich was reeling under the terror of the sudden
coup, the Bavarian heartland had become horrified. Within a few days
Bavarians both in and outside Munich had composed themselves
and begun to fight back against the invaders. A huge crowd
assembled near the palace occupied by Eisner, to the cries of:"Down with Eisner, demon of Israel! Down with Eisner,
Judah's murderous clown! Eisner to the gallows! We want Bavarians to
run Bavaria! Bavaria for the Bavarians!"Eisner dismissed the demonstration as the work of
"extremists" and convened immediate elections to legitimize his coup.By then the Bavarians had lost their fears of the armed
commissars and voted massively against the Eisner regime: in a 180-seat
congress, 177 anti-Eisner congressmen were elected.Eisner dismissed the results. Six days later, a lieutenant
in the defeated German army shot him in the face, point blank.Mühsam succeeded Eisner and called upon Communist agitators
from Augsburg, Fürth, Würzburg, and Lindau, to rush to the
rescue. Mühsam was determined to impose Communism ruthlessly
by force of arms, against the wish of the overwhelming majority of Bavarians.

***

The Marxist "republic" poured out edicts: "all previous laws
are invalid Workers will work when they want . . . History
is the enemy of civilization, and teaching it, is forever abolished."The commissar for foreign affairs sent a telegram to Pope
Benedict XV complaining that the former foreign minister of Bavaria "had
fled to Bamberg after having stolen the keys of the ministry's
bathrooms." He also informed the pope that Berlin minister
Noske was "a gorilla" concluded the telegram: "We want eternal peace."

Communications among fellow Marxist ministers were no more
sane. The foreign minister informed the transport minister
in another telegram:"My dear colleague, I have declared war against Württemberg
and Switzerland because these pigs did not send me 60
locomotives. I am sure of victory. I know the pope
personally and I'll get him to bless our arms."The era of the insane and the exalted was soon to be
replaced by steely- eyed Marxist-Leninist bureaucrats. They
had not been sprung out from jail or an insane asylum but
had been sent to Bavaria directly from Petrograd by Lenin's
International. Lenin had set his mind to have direct control
of Bavaria which was just next door to Allied territories-his
gateways to Western Europe.Lenin sent three of his most murderous commissars to take
control of the Bavarian Red army: the Jews Levine', Levien
and Axelrod, who had earned their stripes in mass terror
under Bronstein-Trotsky. They immediately decreed: "The days of ideology are over. We now have martial
law. The firing squad is taking the place of speeches."Opponents and alleged opponents of the trio were rounded up
and summarily shot to death. Whole massacres of hundreds of
people at a time were common in the streets of Munich.While the murder of defenseless civilians was carried out in
Bavaria, the delegates at the Paris Peace Conference had
their first meeting. Far from being horrified at such
massacres, the Allies could not contain their glee. The
Bavarian bloodbath was a gift from the gods, which meant
that Germany would be split and more Germans would be
killed. Allied diplomatic envoys were rushed to Munich to
kowtow to the bloodthirsty trio. They offered food and money
to bolster their opposition to Berlin. Although the war had
ended, Germany was still under Allied blockade, which was
ruthlessly enforced. The first state of Germany to benefit
from a lifting of the blockade would be Communist-controlled
Bavaria.

***

Everywhere in Germany Lenin's agents spread death and
destruction. The Bolshevik agents would complete the Allied
blockade by paralyzing international food supplies with
sabotage and strikes. The Bolsheviks had closed down the
Ruhr coal mines and people had little heat during the winter
of 1918 to 1919. Thousands of children died of starvation.Lenin thought a starving people would provide good
revolutionary recruits for the final Communist assault on
Berlin.Regiments from the German army reached Berlin on December
11, 1918. In accordance with his function as the new
president of Germany, Socialist Friedrich Ebert was at the
Brandenburg Gate to greet them: "I salute You-you whom no enemy has beaten on the battlefield." These
were the survivors who had left 2 million of their comrades
on the battlefront.

Their features are drawn and their eyes reflect an awful
exhaustion," wrote French historian Benoist-Méchin. "They
have polished their boots and belts, but it is like a
funeral march. The old steel helmets are decorated with oak
leaves. The Uhlan cavalry musicians intoned, with Wagnerian splendor,
Deutschland über Alles.But the heroes knew, despite their day of recognition, that
they were coming home to a country that had been torn apart by
sabotage and revolutions.

On November 9, 1918, the socialist leader Philip Scheidemann
had proclaimed Germany a "republic." At the same time, he
launched what he called the "Republic of the Soviets."Scheidemann and the more radical elements in the Socialist
Party decided to join the Marxist gangs who were beating up people in the
streets and had occupied all of the city's newspaper
offices. Many returned soldiers were set upon and viciously
mugged; their medals and stripes were ripped off their
uniforms. Wounded men were trampled to the ground and kicked
by Communist thugs who had never been at the front.Although Scheidemann admitted "It was not a nice sight," he
decided to form a coalition between "moderate and extremist"
socialists, which was named "the Council of the People's
Commissars."Scheidemann would later explain, "The revolution was
inevitable and it was necessary to lead it in order to avoid
complete anarchy" (The Collapse, p. 232).

The Council of the Peoples' Commissars consisted of three
"moderates" (Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg) and three
"radicals" (Haase, Dittmann and Barth). On November 9, 1918
they were ensconced in Bismarck's former dining room at the
Wilhelmstrasse.Scheidemann himself described how Berlin had fallen prey to
Soviet mobocracy:

Every morning Karl Liebknecht gathered his troops in the
Siegesallee. The focusing point was the statue of Emperor
Otto the Lazy. The principle was to create constant
disorder, to keep "Hell" in motion, and above all fill the streets with the unemployed.I remember one Sunday evening in November. It was raining.
Ebert and I were working with War Minister Scheüch. We were told a crowd
of demonstrators was approaching. We had the gates closed
and all the lights in the front rooms switched off. The
crowd was approaching in the dark with red flags and
inflammatory placards. They screamed over and over: "Down
with Ebert-Scheidemann! Heil Liebknecht!"

The Wilhelmplatz was getting filled with a huge crowd
pressing against the gates. We stood still in an unlit room.
Gradually things quieted down. Liebknecht climbed on top of
a car and addressed the crowd with monotonous and repetitive
slogans. He was drunk with his power and the number of
people listening to him. He was giving vent to the worst
incitements: "The traitors are right in there, the
Scheidemanns, the social-patriots. We could storm their lair
right now ... !"This triggered a roar of approval.Then a band of highly excited soldiers forced their way into
the council room. They said they were talking on behalf of
Berlin's 30 garrison units. In the midst of tumult and
screams they shouted out their demands.It appeared later that these people did not represent
anybody because none of the units mentioned had any
knowledge of them.Liebknecht kept making speeches.Naturally, I was the recipient of the worst insults. They
called me a traitor, and extremist, a lackey, a thief, a
fraud.It was like sitting on dynamite. We worked day and night to
the screams of demonstrators. We were besieged and hardly
defended ... As far as setting a foot in the streets, no one
would even think of it.

Meanwhile, a newly formed group called "the council of the
deserters" was joining the Communists. There was a lot of
talk among the radical left about emulating our Russian
comrades, who were the first to have flown the flag of
freedom." (Scheidemann, Collapse, p. 254.)The "People's Commissars Council" had been given the "press
commissariat" only to find out all the press rooms had been
invaded by rioters who were indeed emulating their Soviet
comrades.Scheidemann became very frightened at what was going on in
the Socialist-Communist government during November and
December, 1918:"The Reich, and Berlin in particular, was like a mental
asylum." (Scheidemann, Collapse, p. 235.)

***

The asylum did contain many criminally insane individuals:
Liebknecht and Luxemburg belonged in that category. They
exploited the misery and panic of a people both out of work
and starving, for their own fanatical purposes. The duo
incited an extraordinary revolutionary ferment. They poured
oil on the fire because it served their interests.Luxemburg feared the return of the soldiers from the front.
They represented a disciplined force still led by patriotic
officers. She was right. The soldiers who had fought four
long years for their country's honor were shocked and
sickened at the sight of the Marxist pandemonium confronting
their eyes and ears. To neutralize any possible reaction
Liebknecht and Luxemburg ordered the Spartacists, as the Communists in
Germany called themselves at the time, to form 14 battalions
with a thousand men each.They would wear red armbands and would control the streets.

Navy mutineers were organized in a division of the
"Volksmarine," which made the imperial palace their
headquarters. They also occupied the Reichsbank and the
Prussian parliament. The third formation was the
"Sicherheitswache," the secret police in charge of all
intelligence and the enforcement of the revolution.Liebknecht took control of the three armed groups. To
control congress he created his own parliamentary police, the Republikanische
Schutztruppe, which wore red-and-black armbands.Lenin had explained his plan succinctly: "We now see clearly
how the revolution will progress: the Germans, the French, the
British will do the work and socialism will triumph."

Ebert was more the hostage than the ally of the Leninists.
Spies tailed him everywhere. His correspondence was read or
stolen and his telephone lines were tapped. Ebert finally
realized he could be liquidated at any time. Although both
Ebert and Scheidemann were men of the left they somehow
remained patriotic. They felt now their only chance of
survival was the army, or what was left of it after they had
undermined it with their Socialist-Communist coalition.Ebert was kept isolated from everyone, but a telephone line
almost saved him. Unknown to the Leninists there was in Ebert's office a
secret line linking, since 1914, the chancery to the German
High Command. Ebert managed to contact Marshal von
Hindenburg in Kassel, at his headquarters in the historic
castle where Napoleon's brother Jerome once reigned over
Westphalia. The flimsy wire linking Berlin to Kassel would
decide the fate of Berlin and Germany.

The first contact was far from friendly. Hindenburg had
little time for Ebert, whom he considered a frightened
captive of the extemists. Although Ebert needed the army's
help, he was fearful of a military dictatorship. He wanted
to use the army to eliminate the extreme left but not the
"moderate" left. After asking for help Ebert lost his nerve
and canceled his request.The Bolsheviks were not quite ready to grab total power. In
the beginning of December, 1918 their militias were well-armed but badly
commanded.They needed another month to bring their troops to combat
readiness. Hindenburg on the other hand was watching his
troops fall apart. The men were tired and wanted to go home. Many did-without
authorization.As the barracks emptied the Communists moved in to seize
weapons and equipment. Hindenburg knew if he wanted to act
he would have to move immediately.

"The Spartacists," wrote Benoist-Mechin, "felt
they were gaining ground. A few more days and they would be the masters of
Germany" (Armée allemande, vol. I, p. 82).

The Spartacists sought mastery of Germany but Lenin was
their master. Scheidemann, who had been playing both sides
to save his skin, nevertheless would accuse his coalition
partners of being on the payroll of Lenin. This was proven
by the famous radio message of Soviet Ambassador Joffe in
Germany. The message was a lengthy accounting of funds
received by the Communist Jew to provoke the revolution in Germany. It read:"Soldiers and sailors, keep your arms. Otherwise the
capitalists will soon disperse you. Conquer the real power,
gun in hand and form a government of workers, soldiers and
sailors with Liebknecht as leader."Thus a foreign power was already trying to impose its
puppets on the German people. The Spartacists were becoming
more insolent by the day. On December 16 they demanded that
Hindenburg be fired.On December 17 they summoned the soldiers' council to a
meeting and organized a vote decreeing:"The supreme command of the army and navy will be entrusted
to people's commissars and to the Central Committee.""All insignia of rank will be abolished.""The soldiers themselves will designate their officers."Officers were discharged and disarmed and often set upon
physically by Leibknecht's thugs.At his headquarters Hindenburg was outraged: "I will never
accept that the insignia I have worn since I joined the army
be torn from my uniform. I do not accept this decision which
concerns the right of command among career officers. I
recognize this decree as totally illegal, apart from
usurping the decision-making process from the national
Assembly."Ebert managed to convince his coalition partners to postpone
their decrees until the January 19, 1919 legislative
elections. He convinced them that the implementation of such
measures could provoke a far stronger reaction than expected. In two months Hindenburg had seen
the frightened Ebert change his position at least 20 times.At the beginning of the war Ebert had said, on August 4,
1914: "This is the most beautiful day in my life." Ebert
switched issues and policies according to whomever he spoke
with last. He was basically honest but his essential lack of
courage inclined him to manipulate and be minipulated.Hindenburg and his right-hand man, General Groner, no longer
believed In him. To them only the army could still stop
Communism. Like Julius Caesar, Hindenburg decided to cross the Rubicon, in this
instance the Spree.

On December 20, 1918 General Groner went to Berlin,
accompanied by Major Schleicher, who would in 1932, be the
last chancellor of the Weimar Republic. Schleicher was an
intelligent soldier but strong-willed and abrupt. Groner was
a superb organizer who had just accomplished the flawless repatriation of all the German armies from the front.Without any real power to back them up except their courage,
they went to confront the revolutionary council. Ebert, at least for
the moment, was won over by the courageous soldiers. Lenin's agents became
hysterical at the sight and ran to the streets screaming for the masses to
arm themselves.The naval revolutionaries rushed to the chancery and
cordoned off all accesses. Ebert was trapped like a rat."We were there without a single armed man to help us and
without any means to oppose rampant thuggery," Ebert said.

Ebert was lost. Once more he used his direct and secret
telephone line to the High Command."The government is imprisoned," he whispered, his mouth
close to the receiver. "You have always told me that if it ever came to
that you would come to our help. The moment has come."The response from High Command was swift: "We will
immediately march from Potsdam to free you."The situation was deteriorating rapidly in Berlin. The chief
of police, Eichhorn, was on the payroll of Rosta, the Soviet
information office. He had taken army headquarters with the
help of armed navy deserters. He captured the Commanding
Officer Wels and two of his assistants and had his Red
guards beat them up savagely. Eichhorn informed them they
would be put to death if Ebert made the slighest move.The Communists thought they had Berlin well in hand and
relaxed their blockade of the chancery. Ebert breathed a sigh of relief
and the eternal turncoat rushed to his secret telephone to
ask Hindenburg to stop his troops marching any further."The marshal and I have reached the end of our patience,"
General Groner answered. "You are destroying the morale of Germany's
last loyal troops."Ebert had cried wolf so many times he had now lost all
credibility, and the German army continued its march to Berlin.Three months before, the German army had been 4 million men
strong.On December 23, 1918 the German army, on its way to wrest
Berlin from the Bolsheviks, was only a handful of loyal
patriots, 800 in all. The deserters and mutineers under
Communist control manning Berlin's fortifications were
supported by tens of thousands of armed Bolsheviks.General Otto Wels was held captive and was expected to be
murdered at any moment. "Weis," wrote Scheidemann, "was still held
prisoner in a cellar below the castle's stables. Radke, the
head of the sailors, announced in the evening he would no
longer answer for Otto Wel's life. They were now trying to occupy the Vowärts printing plant. We could
not just abandon Wels."In the dawn of Christmas, 1918, the German troops bombarded
the palace occupied by the Bosheviks. A wall collapsed on
them and the palace war stormed. At 9:30 in the morning the
Bolsheviks were flying a white flag, ready to surrender.
They asked to start capitulation talks. While the regular
troops were talking, armed Bolsheviks encircled the palace.
Suddenly they attacked in consecutive human waves. It was a
massacre. Only a few survivors managed to escape death and
torture.

Christmas night was horrible. Liebknecht and Luxemburg went
on a rampage of killing, looking everywhere for German
soldiers. Eichhorn had become the warlord of north Berlin.
The socialists could no longer address the crowds. Their
Communist partners had seized their newspaper, Vorwärts, and
occupied their press and editorial offices."A Vorwärts edition had been printed by another printer. It
was seized by the rioters at gunpont and all the newspapers thrown in the
Spree River." (Scheidemann, Collapse, p. 260)."The revolutionaries," wrote Benoist-Méchin, "are triumphing
everywhere. The red flag flies over all the major buildings
in Berlin. December 24, 1918 marks the highest phase of
their power."From now on Berlin was totally under the control of the
Communist terrorists.

At every street corner Spartacists had placed machingunners.
The crackling of bullets and the explosion of grenades could
be heard constantly. Then the shots subsided. A group of
demonstrators were marching by waving placards and an
officer's coat dripping with blood. Firing resumed after the
demonstration had passed.The socialists were trapped. They could not leave the
chancery for fear of being lynched. They could not
communicate with any one in the country because the post
office, the railways and telegraph stations were now in the
hands of the Red councils. They could not even address the
Berlin population because their newspapers and printing
plants had been taken by storm. (Benoist-Méchin, Armée
allemande, p. 102.)Liebknecht came to taunt the socialist ministers outside
their closed windows: "We could choke them in their den."The
Rote Fahne newspaper, organ of the Spartacists,
published in one of its street reports:

The proletarians were massed elbow to elbow. Their multitude
pushed as far as the Tiergarten. They had brought their arms, they waved
their red flags, they were ready for anything. They waited
at Alexanderplatz with guns, heavy and light machine guns.
The sailors were guarding every passageway in Berlin. Public
buildings were full of soldiers, sailors and workers.The highest authorities were now at the mercy of the
revolutionaries.(Scheidemann, Collapse, p. 255 )

CHAPTER XLVIII

Populist Noske Takes on Communism

Lenin had an implacable will and a genius for organization.
He was a man of ideas and a man of action. That was the
reason he had won in Petrograd. The situation in Berlin of December, 1918 was
similar to that in Petrograd, but the leadership was
different. The German Bolsheviks had power within their
grasp but they had wallowed too much in rhetoric. When it
came time to impose their will, they had procrastinated.The way was wide open. Their enemies had been defeated, just
like the troops of Hindenburg, in the streets of Berlin. The
crowds were waiting in the streets for more orders. Lenin
had in one night, in far more difficult circumstances, swept
everything before him.But Liebknecht did not secure his power. He talked for hours
and hours and then the entire night. The crowd was ready to
die for the revolution but as Liebknecht droned on people
became groggy with words and went home.Rote Fahne commented on the failed revolution two weeks
later:

The masses were waiting in the cold and fog since nine in
the morning. The leaders were somewhere talking; no one knew
where. The fog was getting thicker and the masses kept
waiting. By noon the masses were cold, hungry and impatient:
they wanted an act or at least an explanation to make their
waiting more bearable. But nothing came because the leaders
were still talking.The fog became thicker and night started to fall. Sadly the
men went home. They had wanted great things to happen but
they had got nowhere because the leaders kept talking ...
They kept talking through the evening, and all night until
dawn. Once more the crowd gathered along the Siegesallee but
the leaders deliberated again. They talked and talked and
talked.

In politics those who do not act in time are supplanted by
swifter competitors. While the Berlin Leninists talked, a
strong man emerged. He was not a haughty military type, nor
a rich bourgeois, nor an academic, but a robust proletarian.
He had the will of an elemental being and was motivated by a
strong social patriotism, which at the time was the basic
behavior of all honest Germans. While the frightened
socialists did not even dare switch on their office lights a
former wood-cutter from Brandenburg with huge hands and a
powerful frame came to tackle and master everything.His name was Gustav Noske.

Ebert suddenly remembered Noske as a colossus who had been a
socialist deputy in 1914, elected by the coal miners of
Chemnitz. He had distinguished himself during the war as a
brave soldier. His officers had been impressed by his
intuitive intelligence and his strength of character. Noske
had also been impressed by the German officers who led their
men into battle, often dying in the process. He felt a deep
admiration for them and stood ready to take up their fallen
arms.Ebert had been informed that Noske had shown great courage
and ability in quelling the Kiel mutinies. Perhaps he could
do it again in Berlin, where he would confront many more
mutineers, and huge crowds whipped up in a frenzy by Jewish
Marxist agents.On December 24, 1918, as revolutionary agents led a mob of
200,000 against the chancery, Noske made up his mind to
restore order in his own way.

Ebert asked Noske to become war minister in his nominal
government. It was the worst portfolio of all and Noske knew
it. He answered: "I agree. I guess someone has to be a
bloodhound." While Liebknecht was wallowing in Marxist
dialectics, Noske was clear and single-minded in his
mission. He knew verbiage was the enemy of action and
results.Jaurès, the French socialist leader and founder of the
Communist newspaper Humanité, had justified the
mass-slaughter of the 1789 French Revolution thus:

When the slightest hesitation or the slightest error can
compromise the new order for centuries to come, the leaders
of this huge undertaking did not have the time to rally
dissenters and convince their opponents. They had to fight
and act. In order to keep their freedom of action they had
to call on death to create the immediate unanimity they
needed.

Liberals, Socialists and Communists alike would call such
talk "fascist," but it had been the cardinal rule and modus
operandi of all left-wing operations. The revolutionaries of
France in 1789 never stopped chopping people's heads off
until they had eliminated all real or potential dissenters.
The Paris Commune, so admired by Lenin, did exactly the same
thing in 1871: the archbishop of Paris was killed by a
firing squad and many other political opponents were rounded
up and murdered. These two revolutions have remained,
despite the documented reports of their wholesale massacres,
the guiding lights of the left for the last hundred years.Noske, too, knew death was the only way to stop crazed
murderers. Deliberately and calmly, he would crush the
powerful and murderous Communist hordes.At the time Noske had no troops with which to fight. He had
to go out and look for them: "If I wanted to do something
positive to restore order in Berlin I would have to contact the soldiers very quickly and
take them back in hand."It all seemed impossible. The officers had been fired on
December 25, 1918, and the 4 million soldiers had gone home
to their towns and villages. Furthermore, the Communists
controlled the streets and main highways and reinforced a
500-mile offensive front.A new military approach had to be devised to deal with a
situation never encountered in the war manuals: an internal
insurrection organized and led by alien agents and
agitators.Germany would be saved by Noske's determination and also by
the military genius of Colonel Maercker.Maercker was unknown at the time. He had led the 214th
Artillery Division according to conventional tactics. Faced
with revolution Maercker developed an entirely new form of
warfare."It was only when I came home from the front that I realized
the magnitude of the disaster. I was devastated," he said.He immediately knew it would be hopeless to confront
alien-led mobs with a handful of patriotic guards or a few
bourgeois elements playing soldier. Only battle-tested and
disciplined veterans could avoid annihilation. With Noske
and Hindenburg's backing he raced against time to gather
several thousand ex-soldiers who had retained their
patriotism.Maercker guaranteed the men half a pound of meat per day and
increased their pay fivefold. He established a new status of
comradeship among officers and men which would become as
important as military discipline.Troop formation and arms allocation would be related to
specific objectives rather than impersonal administrative
structures. The formations would be small and
self-contained, under the orders of a commander ready and
entitled to take whatever action was necessary. Each unit
would be responsible for the implementation of its actions.
It would be a human and organic organization commanded by a
hierarchy of merit and valor."A specific tactic will be taught to deal with any kind of
situation: occupation of train stations, power plants or
factories, protection of military depots, port facilities
and public buildings, street cleaning, town sanitation or
the dislodging of Communist terrorists from any
emplacement."The breaking down of social castes did not mean lowering
discipline. There was a strict code applying to all-part of
which was the death penalty for anyone caught looting. The
men could elect a council of trustees, which would receive
complaints or suggestions about any aspect of any army
administration and amenities. It would constitute a link
between the men and the officers. Maercker's code also
specified that punishment injurious to a man's honor could
not be inflicted.On the other hand the men had the right to nominate any
soldiers who had accomplished acts of heroism to the rank of
officer.

Such a code was unheard of in those days and Maercker was
relieved when Hindenburg accepted it with interest. It would
lay the foundation for a new German army, made up of
volunteers.

Maercker worked tirelessly under almost impossible
conditions. The Communists had ransacked all the depots or
sabotaged the materiel. The undersecretary for internal
affairs told Maercker: "We can't help you. It's all in your
hands. Do whatever you have to do, by yourself."With an iron will and relentless perseverance, Maercker
combed Germany for qualified volunteers. He managed to
gatner 4,000. They were properly trained and motivated and
were standing by for action near Berlin at the town of
Zossen.Meanwhile, Noske was not wasting his time either. On January
6, 1918, the besieged Socialist ministers gave him emergency
power as civil commander of the army. Noske immediately
re-established discipline among all those around him.
Although he was given dictatorial powers by decree he did
not bother to read the official text. He did not believe
authority could be given: it had to be taken. A natural-born
leader was not chosen: he emerged out of his own strength
and imposed his leadership.

Noske described Berlin on January 6, 1919:

I kept running into demonstrations, at the Brandenburg Gate,
the Tiergarten, and in front of the Defense Ministry. A
large number of armed men were marching with the crowd.
Trucks filled with machine guns had gathered near the
Victory Column. I politely asked that I be let through on
the grounds that I had an urgent matter to attend to. I was
let through only because the crowd was not under determined
leadership. The crowd was hostile but not sufficiently
organized, while its leaders kept babbling. A decisive
leader among them could have easily taken Berlin by noon. In
front of the chancery and the Defense Ministry the crowds
were raising their fists, screaming slogans at the
"warmongers." There was nothing that could be done if they
had decided to storm the buildings. (Benoist-Méchin, Armée
allemande, vol. I, p. 129.)

Noske selected a boarding school for girls located in the
out-of-the-way district of Dahlem to become his
headquarters. At three in the afternoon he requisitioned the
building, known as the Luisenstift. The girls left right
away to make way for the volunteers. Telephone lines were
immediately installed and Noske moved a portable bed and
desk into the corner of the classrrom. He notified the men
of his Kiel "Iron Brigade" to rush to Berlin, and a small
airforce squadron to stand by in Potsdam. He also learned
from Maercker that the 4,000 volunteers were ready to move.

The odds were disproportionate. The Spartacists disposed of
entire regiments formed months ago. They had placed more
than 2,000 machine- gunners on rooftops, behind windows, and
on street corners across Berlin, as well as 22 cannons at
strategic points. The navy mutineers had accumulated a huge
arsenal of arms and ammunition in the Marstall courtyard,
which had become a center of distribution for all
revolutionaries. Noske's only advantage was his
organizational skill. He had a precise plan and capable
aides. Above all he was fearless, he owed favors to no one:
his power came from within.It was quality versus quantity: a hundred sheep are no match
for one lion, and a thousand sparrows are no match for one
eagle. Men of inner strength, regardless of how few they
are, will always dominate the herd.Noske was facing crazed Communist terrorists who did not
think for themselves. They were manipulated and used by
alien agitators for the benefit of alien interests. He knew
Lenin had won power only by murdering millions of people who
did not submit to his will. Within 15 months of Lenin's rule
8'h million Russians died through massacres or state-induced
starvation. Noske knew if he was to survive the Leninist
onslaught he had no alternative but to use terror superior
to that of the Bolsheviks and to be more ruthless than
Lenin.

The Spartacists had asked the Red garrisons of Frankfurt on
the Oder and Spandau to come to the rescue. On January 10,
1919 Noske burst onto the national scene.His volunteers stormed the Communist-occupied city hall of
Spandau and captured all the Communists inside. Within
minutes all of them were shot by firing squads, just as the
Bolsheviks had done everywhere they had gone.Next another group of volunteers under the command of Major
von Stefani approached the newspaper district of Berlin. The
Sparticists had confiscated all the newspapers including the
Socialist mouthpiece Vorwärts. Noske ordered his cannoneers
to blast the front of the building. Part of it collapsed.
The Communists rushed out, waving white handkerchiefs. They
were given no quarter and were mowed down under heavy fire.
Three hundred others were caught at the back. A Bolshevik
counterattack allowed a few to escape; most of them were
shot. Noske's men stormed western Berlin, which fell within
hours.The next day Berlin was a desert. The few thousand German
volunteers advanced in column formations to the center of
the city. There was not a sound or a murmur. The Berliners
looked on in amazement, as if they had just awakened from a
nightmare. They saw a giant marching alone at the head of
his troops in streets free of Communists. Realizing they had
been liberated, they burst forth in cheers for their
liberator.

There was one last Bolshevik stronghold: police
headquarters. It was commanded by Eichhorn, Lenin's agent in
Berlin. Noske waited for night to fall. Then he ordered a
sudden and massive attack. The building walls were biased
away. There followed two hours of ferocious hand-to-hand
combat. Everywhere the Communists were tracked down. Few
survived.Yesterday's Communist dictators of Berlin were in a panic.
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who had subjected Berlin
to a reign of terror, were now in hiding.They were found on January 15, 1919 and taken to the Berlin
Guard's headquarters. After a brief interrogation they were
executed on the spot.Thus the Bolshevik dictators of Germany were shot down like
rabid dogs. For two months they had terrorized the country.
They had had control over the masses, but their disorderly
minds and verbiage cost them their lives. Lenin had planned
every detail of his 1917 revolution, never wasting time on
talk: he thought and acted ahead.The socialist leaders expressed no regret at the gruesome
end of their coalition partners. Scheidemann, who, the
following week, would become president of the Reich council,
summed up what had happened: "The two victims (Liebknecht
and Luxemburg) had every day called the people to take up
arms to ovethrow the government. Now their own tactics have
backfired against them."

The socialists had thought Noske's capture of Berlin meant
the end of Bolshevism in Germany. They were mistaken. The
Communists had regrouped. They seized Bremen, followed by
the Ruhr and Saxony two months later."People angered by misery and distress were led to
destruction by conscienceless agents:' (Scheidemann, The
Collapse, p. 264)The delegates at the Paris peace conference had shown
indifference to the successive explosions of international
Communism in Germany. Noske and Maercker had managed to stem
the Red tide but few in Paris showed any concern that Europe
might be engulfed in it. The Entente politicians' hatred of
Germany took precedence over their own security. They
regarded the Eisners, Liebknechts and Luxemburgs as
punishing angels who would keep Germany in turmoil."The Entente," said Scheidemann, "was very happy to see the
worst extremists in control of Germany. The Entente even
wooed them with offers of aid and support, as in the case of
the Bavarian extremists."

Noske's ruthless crushing of the Berlin Bolsheviks had given
Germany breathing space. Elections were held; the results
were surprising. Of 421 seats the Social Democrats won 163,
the Center and the bourgeois national parties took 229, and
the pro-Communist Independent Socialists and Communists, 22.
The real winner was Noske, who declared to the new assembly:
"It is now established that Germany fought only to save its
life." Although he would be later denounced for his
ruthlessness, in early 1919 he was acclaimed by all as the
savior of Germany.

Noske persuaded the newly elected representatives that the
congress should meet at Weimar rather than Berlin. Sporadic
Communist violence could again flare up in Berlin, and most
deputies did not relish the prospect of being made prisoners
by crazed Sparticists a second time.On February 6, 1919, after an initial fracas with local
Communists, the parliament of Germany opened at the city
theater. Ebert read a lackluster speech in keeping with the
general mediocrity of the assemblage.The deputies were petty-minded bourgeois, craven and
servile. They hated the revolution-Ebert admitted it
himself-and they felt embarrassed to have benefited from it
to such an extent.Whether Social Democrats, Centrists, or democrats, they were
all old political hacks from the Kaiser's Reichstag,
interchangeable in their uninspiring drabness. Ebert was
elected president and Scheidemann as speaker. They would be
no match for the Communists, and at the first clash with
them would fall to pieces.

No sooner had the new republic started its term of office
than the Communists would provoke uprisings from Bavaria to
Schleswig. For the next five months a handful of Reichswehr
men would fight for Germany's survival. They would stand
against Lenin's forces in Germany as well as against the
avenging schemers of Versailles.

CHAPTER XLIX

First Weeks in Paris

While Germany was wracked by bloody insurrection,
politicians and bureaucrats from all over the world were
meeting in Paris. From January 18, 1919, to June 28, when
the Versailles Treaty was finally signed, there were 1,500
sessions and 24 commissions.Despite the glittering social life the delegates still had
time to indulge in schemes and intrigues. Lloyd George,
flanked by Churchill and Balfour, busied himself by
outwitting Clemenceau, who was busy clearing the deck of
French politicians he thought useless or incompetent.
Ambassador Cambon and President Poncaré were shunted aside,
leaving Clemenceau on center stage.Immediately before the procedings opened, a Czech politician
lobbying to become prime minister of a yet-to-be-created
Czechoslovakia was nearly assassinated. Brazil obtained
three seats on the supreme council without anybody knowing
why, since the Brazilian army had hardly crossed swords with
the Germans.The Slovakian delegate, Milan Stefanik, was shot down over
Bratislava by Czech agents whose masters were determined to
suppress Slovakian sovereignty. The famed Polish musician
Paderewski, who had become president of Poland, was cutting
a dashing figure at the Paris Opera. Colorful delegates from
exotic parts of the world had joined the conference either
to press their own demands or just to be part of the ongoing
festivities.The German delegates were, on the other hand, ostracized.
They were excluded from the conference deliberations: they
were not to be heard or seen. Only during the very last days
did they appear, to sign the treaty. On that occasion they
were greeted with a hail of stones. One German delegate's
secretary was hit in the face and lost her right eye.

Paris was the setting for five months of continuous parties
and revelry. Thousands of more or less authentic victors
were celebrating. Fashionable writers like Proust, Cocteau
and Gide were much in demand in French salons. Revolutionaries were also highly prized. Madame de
Jouvenel, a leading socialite, gave a magnificent reception
in honor of the assassin of Russian Grand Duke Serge and the
tsarist minister Plehve.Bedroom diplomacy was also elevated to new heights with the
influx of thousands of Czech, Romanian and Serbian
high-class prostitutes brought in by the central European
delegates. Their mission was to reinforce the claims and
demands made at the conference table in the intimacy of the
boudoir. Clemenceau commented: "These girls are destroying
the conscience of the arbiters of peace." The Slovak
Stefanik was outraged but his colleague Benes felt the
"ladies were playing an essential part" in convincing the
delegates that it was wise and proper to place the Bohemians
and Moravians as well as 6 million Germans, Poles, and
Hungarians, under Czech control. Benes' star performer was
called Doria. She spoke five languages and developed great
influence among all the delegates staying at the Hotel
Crillon.The British delegate Nicolson greatly admired another
outstanding practitioner, Madame Alexander: "She knew
everything, had access everywhere, obtained everything she
asked. She was one figure who made history but was not known
to the general public."

If some delegates lost their conscience others lost their
health. The puritan Wilson was quick to take to the Paris
nightlife. His detractors claimed he had contracted a
venereal disease that drained his already precarious health,
and his "predicament" became the talk of the conference.Clemenceau saw fit to exploit the situation by passing the
word around. His right-hand man Tardieu told House: "I
understand it is a very delicate matter but we fear the
president is about to suffer a physical breakdown." Nicolson
had remarked that all the delegates were stunned by "his
psychophysiological collapse."All those opposed to his Fourteen Points were delighted with
Wilson's predicament. They would even hold meetings at his
bedside with apparent sympathy, while hardly able to hold
their glee.Wilson was aware of his illness and was terrified its nature
could be revealed to his puritanical electorate. At first he
made an attempt to stand by his Fourteen Points but finally
gave up. Within weeks there would be nothing left of them.
Even had Wilson led a life of absolute virtue in Paris, his
plan to reform the world was doomed from the start. The
British Government was determined to grab oil-producing
countries in the Middle East despite all the treaties and
agreements they had signed to the contrary. French
politicians were determined to occupy Saarland, the
Rhineland and points east militarily. A greedy mafia of
Serbian, Czech, Romanian and Polish politicians was equally determined to trample human
rights and gobble up 20 million Germans, Slovaks,
Hungarians, Croatians, and Austrians without the slightest
consultation. The dismemberment of Turkey and the
appropriation of German colonies by the British were also on
the agenda. The indigenous peoples were parcelled off as in
the days of slavery.Wilson had come to Paris with the highest political and
moral authority. Without him the Allies would have lost the
war in 1917. Even in June, 1918 Tardieu had declared he no
longer believed in victory. The Germans had contacted him
when they decided to surrender. Wilson had negotiated the
armistice conditions himself and secured their acceptance by
the Allies. Under normal circumstances he should have had
his way at Versailles. As Bullitt wrote:

In the history of humanity the future has rarely depended on
one man to such an extent as during Wilson's first month in
Paris. When he found himself facing Lloyd George and
Clemenceau in House's office at the Hotel Crillon on March
14, 1919 the fate of the world depended on him alone. But
not one Allied signatory of the armistice had accepted it
with sincerity. Their war aims, the real ones, had been
arranged among themselves with secret treaties during the
course of the hostilities. They were diametrically opposed
to Wilson's peace plans, including impartial justice and
equal rights for all people. In the eyes of Clemenceau the
Fourteen Points ... were the ramblings of a lunatic.
(President Wilson, p. 360.)

Although Wilson realized the Allies were not cooperating, he
could do little about it because he had absolutely no
knowledge of European affairs. An observer said: "His
ignorance of Europe bordered on the fantastic. It left
people stunned with disbelief. He had no idea of the
existence of 3 million Sudeten Germans, whom Czechoslovakia
wanted to enslave.""Masaryk had never talked to me about them," Wilson said.Wilson was also convinced there were more than 100 million
Jews in the world.

Teams of foreign affairs experts from Harvard, Yale and
other Ivy League centers had been set up to inform the
president, but Wilson did not seek their advice.Robert Lansing, his secretary of state, was knowledgeable
about Europe, but Wilson did not let him put his ability to
use. Even House was losing his influence, because Wilson's
second wife did not like him and warned her husband almost
everyday that he was a Judas.The British politicians had not waited to meet with Wilson
before helping themselves to everything they wanted. Their
war aims had been satisfied at the time of Germany's
surrender, since they had already acquired German assets and
colonies. Their aim at Versailles and Paris was to sabotage
the French, whom they now regarded as their new rivals. They
also regarded Wilson's peace plan as totally irrelevant.Wilson's geographical ignorance was matched by that of
Clemenceau, who looked upon central Europe as a confused
jungle. France was all he knew and all that interested him.
Tardieu, however, had enlisted experts to prepare a lengthy
list of claims and reparations.Bureaucrats of all countries were kept busy in 58
commissions. They made little impact and were only called on
to produce demands to back up the various ministerial
councils. The "Council of Ten," which was the Council of
Five with the addition of the five major presidents, held 72
sessions; the "Council of Four," without the Japanese
minister, held 145 sessions and even the "Council of Three"
met when the Italian prime minister stormed out of the
meeting, shouting, "down with Wilson."Harold Nicolson, the English delegate, took extensive notes
of the proceedings and published them in a book called
Peacemakers 1919. He recalled: "The work was discouraging.
One felt so fallible in these matters! A map, a pencil, a
transparent paper. My heart sank at the thought of the
individuals our erratic lines would save or reject."

Nicolson described the proceedings during a meeting at the
conference of Paris:

Afternoon, final revision of the Austrian borders. I walk to
Rue Nitot after lunch to brief A.J. Balfour. Inside a room
with heavy tapestry below the portrait of a smiling Marie de
Medicis the sound of a fountain could be heard coming from
the garden. The fate of the Austro-Hungarian empire would be
decided in this room. Hungary would be cut up by five
distinguished gentlemen with indolence and irresponsibility.
While the water sprinkles the lilac trees, while those with
knowledge anxiously observe, while Balfour dozes off, while
Lansing doodles, while Pichon lounges in his large
arm-chair, winking like an owl, Transylvania is redrawn.
After Tardieu and Lansing trade insults like tennis balls,
Hungary is dismembered by noon. They go on to
Czechoslovakia. For Yugoslavia the committee's report is
adopted without modification. Then afternoon
tea-and-macaroons is served.

On May 13, 1919 Nicolson and his colleagues were called to
enlighten Lloyd George, Balfour and Wilson about Asia Minor.
They spread a large map on the dining room table:

Everybody sits around the map. It is like a cake about to be
cut and served. Lloyd George explains his proposal. The
Italians demand Scala Nova. "No," says Lloyd George, "you
can't have it, it's full of Greeks!" He continues to show
them there are other Greeks in Makri and along the
coastline. I whisper to him, "No, there are very few Greeks
around there." He answers, "Yes there are; can't you see
it's colored green." I understand then he was confusing my map with an ethnic map. He believes green means
Greek and brown means Turkish, instead of valleys and
mountains.Orlando and Sonnino chatter in Italian. They demand the coal
mines of Eregli. Lloyd George says, "But it is bad coal and
in any case there isn't much of it." Sonnino translates the
remark to Orlando who answers, "I want them, it's good for
my morale."Finally, they appear ready to accept a mandate on the Adalia
region but we do not know very clearly if in exchange they
will give up Fiume and Rhodes. We pull out the agreement of
the League of Nations concerning the mandates. We notice it
stipulates "with the consent and wish of the people
concerned."They find this phrase very amusing and they all laugh.
Orlando's white jowls wobble with mirth and his puffy eyes
swell up with tears of joy.It is immoral and impractical but I obey my orders.

Professor Clive Day from Yale University confirmed
Nicolson's observations:

Each time a territorial question arose they pored over the
maps with imperturbable gravity. However, no one knew
whether the maps were upside down. It really did not matter
anyway. (What Happened in Paris, 1918-1919, p. 30.)

As if this were not enough, many of these maps had been
tampered with. Lloyd George himself became aware that the
maps and accompanying data had been falsified and gave vent
to his outrage publicly at Queen's Hall: "All the
documentation provided by some of our allies during the
negotiations was false and cooked up. We have made our
decisions on the basis of a fraud."It is in such ignorance, irresponsibility and dishonesty
that the Versailles treaty, the most important treaty in the
history of the world, was organized. Field Marshall Smuts,
prime minister of South Africa, then a British dominion,
admitted later: "Everything we have done here is far worse
than the Congress of Vienna. The statesmen of 1815 at least
knew what was going on. Our statesmen have no idea.

To the political imcompetence of the day one must add the
general venality of the press. Not unlike today, it had the
power to make or break all incumbent or prospective
politicians. Anybody could be a hero one day and a pariah
the next. The press decided what was news and what was not.The press lords had become fabulously wealthy before the
war. Millions of dollars poured in from Russia, Serbia and
Romania to the proprietors of newspapers, who in turn
dictated to the politicians to lend vast sums to these countries. Corporations also sought the favors of the
press by plying them with cash, stocks and even a generous
share of their profits.French politicians knew who was boss and lived in fear of
running afoul of the press. They yielded to the press
barons' orders every time. The Russian and Serbian millions
were well invested. The press blackmailed the French
government to lend billions of gold francs to Russia and
Serbia. The press lords, of course, were getting commissions
on these loans. The billions naturally came from the pockets
of the hard-pressed French taxpayers. It would have been
political suicide for any politician to voice opposition to
such loans.Even during the war Russian money kept coming: one million
gold francs went to Le Figaro. This was at a time when a
soldier risking his life in the trenches was paid five cents
a day.The making of the Versailles Treaty considerably raised the
stakes for the power-and-money-hungry press. It was no
longer a matter of getting fat commissions on extorted loans
but of a share in cutting up the world. All the Versailles
"victors" were there to acquire territory. The Czechs wanted
a corridor slicing through Hungary so they could unite with
Serbia. The Serbians wanted to gobble up Albania. The Greeks
wanted Smyrna. The Italians wanted all the land between
Fiume and Adalia, well inside Turkey. Rich with French
loans, all these voracious claimants plied the press with a
continuing flow of money. The press conducted an ongoing
auction: whoever paid the most could be reasonably assured
of a favorable treatment for even the most absurd claim.French academician André Maurois noted: "The agitation of
the masses was not only unfortunate but it was the work of a
press interwoven with governments."Le Temps had the highest rates: from 100,000 gold francs to
200,000 per "documented" article. Figaro and Le Matin
fetched 50,000, the Journal des Débats, 25,000 francs.

***

The favorseekers continued to outbid each other, often with
dire results. Le Temps dropped Serbia after receiving 3
million gold francs when it was paid 5 million to say the
opposite. Serbian politicians, well versed in corruption for
many years, declared themselves to be outraged! Dragomir
Stefanovich, son-in-law and spokesman for Serbian political
boss Pashich, declared:"We are very dispelased in Belgrade at
Le Temps's attitude.
It is useless to spend more money to buy its good will."There was also a heavy traffic in business deals and
contracts. Le Temps's owners had been granted a construction
contract in Russia as well as exploitation rights in
Serbia's richest copper mines at Bor and in the Slovakian forests in the summer of 1914. Fortunes were made
almost overnight. By February, 1919 the Romanians admitted
having spent "more than 10 million gold francs, without
counting petty bribes." Added the chief delegate of
Bucharest: "But at that price Transylvania and Bukovina will
really cost us nothing." Indeed, at that price it would cost
Romania an average of three francs per Hungarian in the
denationalization and annexation of the Hungarian population
and territory. The greed of these people at the trough of
victory even shocked Clemenceau, who called them "jackals."
The American secretary of state, Lansing, was appalled and
made public his fears of the consequences of such practices.In ignorance and corruption the fate of the world would be
played out. The League of Nations would be created, the maps
of nations would be redrawn, populations would be annexed or
exchanged, huge reparations schedules would be set. There
was never any question of rebuilding peace with Germany. The
Germans were meant to be reduced to total impotence forever.
To ignorance and corruption could be added blind hatred.
Germany was to be destroyed by any means. Allied politicians
saw in Bolshevism a wonderful adjunct of vengeance. Germany
was to be hammered into oblivion between Allied vengeance
and Communist terror. The Paris atmosphere was so thick with
hatred that all those who did not display genocidal
tendencies toward the Germans were immediately branded enemy
lackeys. The American delegate Bowman complained: "At all
times one had to give tangible proof of hatred against the
enemy lest one be accused of being Germanophile."Churchill however did not object, showing himself a
consummate demagogue: "One must satisfy an excited crowd."Clemenceau was blunt: "The peace conference is a
continuation of war."

CHAPTER L

A Comedy

The Germans dutifully implemented the draconian conditions
of the November armistice. The 4 million soldiers of the
German army had gone home and, aside from the few thousand volunteers who
defended Berlin against the Bolsheviks, Germany was in fact
disarmed and defenseless. Even the most ardent anti-German
politician of them all, Tardieu, conceded: "As of January
15, 1919 all the materiel which the November 11 armistice
had ordered Germany to deliver was in the hands of the
victors." (Peace, p. 141.)Marshal Foch, who had moved his headquarters to the German
town of Trier, renewed the armistice for another two months
but this time under even worse conditions. Peace had become
an extension of the war: Germany had disarmed but was still
the object of war.

The victors lacked the statemanship to conclude a peace for
the benefit of Europe and the world. They lived in the past,
where the sole objective of war was to acquire real estate
from neighboring countries. Lenin had changed all that.
Communism fought for mastery of the whole world. The
conquest of Germany had started in November, 1918 as a
steppingstone to conquer Europe. The enemy was no longer the
fugitive Kaiser. Prostrate Germany had become the bulwark
protecting Europe from the Communist onslaught.As much as the Allies hated Germany, their own survival
demanded they did not destroy this bulwark. Lloyd George,
who had promised his electorate that he would pulverize
Germany, showed some belated concern when he asked: "Is it
our interest to throw Germany into the arms of Bolshevism?"

However, the Allies were caught in a web of secret treaties
which left them little room to meet new situations. They had
agreed to Wilson's Fourteen Points so long as it ensured American's
participation in the war, but with victory they had
reasserted their original war aims. Tardieu explained why
his government, until the armistice, had made no mention of
its policy of "breaking down German unity": "victory came
late for the Allies. In 1918 it was the defeat of the
British army under General Gough, in May it was the 'Chemin
des Dames' and the bombing of Paris. To announce at this
time or before what we called the `vivisection of Germany'
would have been singularly incautious." (Peace, p. 409.)Clemenceau also looked on Germany's 60 million population,
20 million more than France, as the height of effrontery. He
declared: "In the old days I know what would have been done
with them."Short of killing them all at the revolutionary guillotine
Clemenceau was determined to distribute a large part of the
German population among all of Germany's neighbors. The
French, the Czechs, and Poles, the Italians, the Serbs, the
Belgians, the Danes were all meant to absorb millions of
Germans.Wilson did not fathom the greed of his allies until after
six months of intrigue and doubletalk. He then returned to
Washington, a bitter, disillusioned man who realized he had
been fooled.

Wilson's first capitulation dealt with the establishment of
the League of Nations. It was one of the Fourteen Points
that it would be the forum for implementing peace and the
cornerstone of the armistice. It was the solemn engagement
of all belligerents, winners and losers alike, to proceed in
creating the league once the armistice had been signed.David Hunter Miller, Wilson's legal counsel declared:In truth the declaration of the Fourteen Points relative to
the establishment of a League of Nations had formally
become, as our government note of November 5, 1918 proves,
one of the basic conditions of peace with Germany. It was
the right of Germany to insist for its own protection that
the League of Nations be established. (What Happened in
Paris in 1918-1919, p. 311.)This right of Germany had been the very basis of its
acceptance of the armistice."Germany," said Miller, "had always vigorously maintained
that it interpreted President Wilson's words, `a general
association of nations,' not only as an association of
nations making the treaty, but as an association of which
Germany would immediately become a member."This would not happen. Decisive years would pass without any
German participation in the League of Nations. Clemenceau
had set the tone for dispensing with a German voice: "One
must never negotiate with a German or make a deal; one must
impose a solution on him." The most far-flung British
dominions were made members but for some years Germany was excluded. Thus the armistice conditions were violated before
the peace conference even began.Professor Pierre Rain, a French observer, stated: "The
integrity of the doctrine was compromised: the worm was
already in the fruit." (Versailles' Europe, p. 49.)The British delegate John Maynard Keynes said: "It would be
stupid to believe that there should be in the world much
room for tales like the League of Nations or the principle
of self-determination. These are only ingenious formulas,
used to tip the balance of power in one's own favor."(The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 37-38.)Rain also noted: "There was no real acceptance of Wilson's
Fourteen Points."

On January 8, 1918 Wilson had already made it known that the
"interests of the colonial subjects must weigh equally with
those of other territories." The basis of his Fourteen
Points was the self-determination of all peoples. The
British Empire, on which the sun never set, had no intention
of entertaining such a policy. India, with a population of
320 million at the time, was restive under British colonial
rule. Mass demonstrations were held in favor of independence
and liberation from colonialism while the Treaty of
Versailles was being negotiated. On April 19, 1919 British
troops did not hesitate for a moment to fire on the unarmed
demonstrators in the city of Amritsar. 379 were killed and
countless wounded. In Egypt crowds demanding independence
"in the name of Wilsonian principles" were also brutally put
down, as were protesters in Palestine.In accordance with the legendary British policy of "divide
and rule" the British used Australians to massacre the
Indians as they had done a few years before when Australians
were brought into South Africa to make war on the Boers.
Indian mercenaries were used to repress the Egyptians;
Egyptians were used to quell the Palestinians. As recently
as 1982, Nepalese Gurkhas were used in the war against
Argentina.

The British empire had been put together by years of
piratical operations and political double-crosses. "The
City," as the British financial establishment is known,
presided over the exploitation of its colonies and dominions
with force and ruthlessness. The moralism pervading Wilson's
Fourteen Points was anathema to the City, even as a public
relations facade. During the first week of the conference
British delegate Crowe reprimanded his colleague Nicolson,
an honest Englishman, because he had detected some scruples
in him. Nicolson somehow felt obligated to honor the commitment his government had given Wilson during the
November armistice agreements. Said Crowe:This would be an absurdity, my dear Nicolson; your mind is
not clear. You think you are logical and sincere but you are
not. Would you apply the right of self-determination to
Egypt, India, Malta, Gibraltar? If you are not ready to go
as far as that, don't pretend you are logical. And if you
want to go that far you would be well advised to go back to
London immediately.The liberty of people would remain the liberty of dominating
people.Within the French colonial empire, the Destour party in
Tunisia had asked for some measure of freedom immediately
after the armistice. The tribal chiefs of Italian-controlled
Libya were pressing for an independent "Republic of
Tripolitania." In Spanish Morocco the Moslem leader Abd el-
Krim had organized a rebellion for independence. In the
Dutch East Indies the independence movement Sarekat Islam,
with 2'/z million members, was agitating for the rights
President Wilson had promised them.

Not a single country among the Allies would grant the
slightest independence to any of the countries it dominated.
The inhabitants of the former German colonial empire had
simply passed under British rule; a few had passed under
French, Belgian or even Japanese rule. The British
Establishment hypocritically called its new colonies
"mandates." Wilson had proclaimed that the "mandates" should
be administered by "the states best suited to perform the
task." The British had grabbed the German colonies at
gunpoint and somehow felt ordained to run them."It was then," noticed Nicolson, not without indignation,
"that a fabric of sophisms and jesuitical argument would
pervert with lies the text and the substance of the whole
treaty."The "sacred mission" assigned to the future League of
Nations had been scuttled in a matter of days. The powerful
would remain powerful and the weak (even if they numbered
hundreds of millions) would see their freedom disappear like
a magician's rabbit.

Because the Allies still needed American financial aid they
paid lip service to Wilson's project, the League of Nations.
But within two weeks the substance of the League had been
sucked out of it. Even the clause on religious equality
would not survive, although Wilson had emphatically demanded
it. The British Establishment torpedoed this particular
clause because it did not want to change the practice of
excluding Catholics from acceding to the British throne.

Wilson let go of his principles, one after the other. In
November, 1918 he dropped the freedom of the seas; in
January, 1919 he dropped the right of self-determination for
colonial peoples, and now he was abandoning religious
equality.Ironically, Wilson would finish off the League of Nations
with his own nationalist demands.Wilson's "right of self-determination" was in total conflict
with the Monroe Doctrine, by which the United States claimed
the right to intervene in the affairs of all the countries
of the Americas to the total exclusion of any other country
in the world. American public opinion was not about to
renounce this monopoly, and Congress put Wilson on notice
not to tamper with the doctrine. This time Wilson's
principles were subordinated to electoral considerations.With the forked tongue of diplomatic gobbledygook, Wilson
transformed the principle of self-determination into a truly
Orwellian statement, embodied in the League's Article XV:
"Regional ententes like the Monroe Doctrine are in no way
contradictory to the principle of self- determination; on
the contrary they are perfectly compatible with it." With a
hypocrisy that would have made the British proud, Wilson was
just playing on words. The fact remained that only the
United States had the right of intervention in some 20
American countries, without any reciprocity on their part.Deprived of any relevance, the League of Nations would open
its doors in Geneva as a monument to futility. For 20 long
years, billions of dollars would be lavished on partying
bureaucrats and diplomats from all over the world. Summer
was especially favored as the social season to see and to be
seen. Briand, the French minister, was once heard quipping
to his aides: "Now look, don't you know that truth must
never be spoken? Remember that in the future!"Every delegate was living a lie and everyone knew it. The
League's statutes had been drafted in less than three weeks,
strictly for appearance's sake."Self-determination and human rights are a joke," said
Tardieu.Wilson realized this more than anyone. The League was as
hollow as a drum. Wilson thought he could substitute form
for substance. During the reading of the statutes, his aides
brought him a Bible, which "he clutched with a trembling
hand" throughout the ceremony as if he were about to utter
the oath to uphold the Constitution. Producing the Bible at
the ratification of inequity only compounded its hypocrisy.The emasculation of the League would mark Wilson's first
defeat. The failure of disarmament would mark the second.

CHAPTER LI

The Sabotage of Disarmament

Along with the Fourteen Points Wilson had proclaimed the
necessity of establishing world disarmament. Once more the
president of the Untied States was theoretically right. It was a noble dream
of great importance for the peace of the world. Its success
depended, of course, on the willingness of his European
allies to share it. The armistice had been concluded on the
basis that Germany would immediately disarm and the other
countries would follow suit.André François-Poncet, France's most senior ambassador,
recognized that the Versailles diplomats had decided not
only upon the disarmament of Germany but of all other
countries as well. "The treaty expressly stated, and
Clemenceau had confirmed it in a letter to the German
delegation, that the disarmament of Germany would only be a
prelude to general disarmament." (François-Poncet, From
Versailles to Potsdam, p. 75).The Paris Conference had already dealt with Germany's
disarmament. Germany was militarily reduced to nil. In the
course of the debate its forces had been reduced to 96,000
men and 4,000 officers. This left Germany defenseless in the
face of Communist aggression. (In 1932 Germany would count
six million votes for the Communist Party.)Numerous clauses ensured that this meager contingent could
never be expanded:

Art. 176: Suppression of all military academies.Art. 180: Disarmament of all fortifications in the
demilitarized zone.Art. 198: Demobilization of all air force personnel.Art. 202: Delivery to the Allies of all air force materiel.Arts. 42/43: Complete demilitarization of the Rhineland.Art. 166: Limitation on munition depots.Art. 170 Prohibition on importing or exporting military
equipment.Art. 171: Prohibition on manufacturing tanks and toxic gas.Art. 188: Prohibition on manufacturing arms, munitions or
militarymateriel in any other plants but those controlled by the
Allies. Suppression of all arsenals.Art. 172: Delivery to the Allies of manufacturing secrets
and patents.Art. 173: Abolition of [compulsory-ed.] military service.
Art. 177: Schools and sports clubs prohibited from
involvement in military teaching or having any contact with the defense
ministry.Art. 213: The right of the League of Nations to control
Germany.Clemenceau relied on Article 213 to keep Germany down
forever.

***

It was not enough that both sides of the Rhine River be out
of bounds to German soldiers. Germany was prohibited from
sending troops to within 35 miles of the Rhine on the German
side, even to defend the country against Communist
revolution.This prohibition gave the green light to the Communists to
rush to the Rhineland, to be ready to take over. Within two
months of the edict, in March, 1919 Communist shock troops
were invading the Rhineland. A small unit of German soldiers
was dispatched to contain them and restore order. Clemenceau
seized the opportunity provided by this infraction of the
edict to occupy two major German cities beyond the armistice
line.Germany was caught between the implacable enforcement of the
Versailles Treaty and a wave of Bolshevik insurrection.Tardieu proudly announced each step of Germany's military
downfall:Completed reduction: Soldiers, 98%, infantry division,
96.7%, army high command, 100%, chief of staff commands,
97%, heavy artillery, 100%, light artillery, 96.6%.Our delegation is responsible for the work of breaking down
the power of the most military nation on earth . . . We
struck at the head when we eliminated the High Command, the
military academies and the mobilization apparatus. We
delivered a body blow when we eliminated conscription, when
we fixed to 12 years the term of service for the 100,000 men
allowed in uniform. We have eliminated their entire heavy
artillery, their tanks, their air force. We have prohibited
the right to manufacture them and their right to keep them.
(Tardieu, Peace).During that same year Trotsky would raise with unparalleled
brutality an army of 5 million men. Tardieu had little
concern for this type of "disarmament."Bolshevik mobilization, however, did start to concern some
of the other Allies. On May 23, 1919 Lloyd George admitted:
"Although I went along with limiting the German army to
100,000 men, I recognize today that it is very small. It may
be advisable to reassess this whole problem."On June 8, 1919 the Allied Committee comprising Field
Marshal Henry Wilson and Generals Bliss, Destiker, Cavallero
and Nara proposed that Germany should be allowed to have
armed forces of a minimum of 300,000 men. The move was
blocked by the French politicians. (Tardieu, Peace, P. 159)

The obligations imposed on Germany were accompanied by a
dizzying array of controls. Allied missions in uniform would
for years crisscross Germany to check barracks and factories
for the slightest infraction.Clemenceau shouted in Parliament: "If you go into this
treaty with as much joy as our men went into the war, you
will bring it alive ... When you are done with this magnificent task you will be entitled to
congratulate yourselves."Tardieu added: "A modern mobilization takes years of
preparation and it must be done openly. These conditions are
no longer in the hands of the Germans."The Allies, who had pledged that they would disarm after
Germany had done so, were now welching on their armistice
obligations.Even the establishment historian Renouvin recognized that
Germany's disarmament could only be enforced as a prelude to
general disarmament, as agreed by the Armistice signatories:There would be no question that Churchill would demand that
the [Armistice] commitment would be renewed in the Treaty.
But it was then suggested, that a codicil be inserted
linking this disarmament to the "general perspectives of
universal disarmament" before the chapters dealing with Germany's disarmament. President Wilson agreed to this
renewal of the Armistice agreement.The Germans had never given grounds for Allied suspicion.
Marshal Foch himself would state in writing in 1927: "German
disarmament has been totally completed." For the previous
eight years the Allied Commission on disarmament had
operated at full capacity and concluded officially that
Germany had been fully disarmed.During these eight years the Allies failed to comply with
their signed agreement in the Armistice and Versailles
Treaty. They did not make the slightest attempt to live up
to the Treaty despite Germany's total compliance. The German
governments from 1919 to 1927 were almost totally
subservient to the Allies and never represented the
slightest threat.There was no reason for the Allies to refuse to abide by the
treaty they had signed.After fifteen years of consistent welching it was to be
expected that the Germans would question the validity of
complying with a one-sided agreement. Not only did the Allies not disarm as they had
agreed, but they never stopped re-arming.

***

Clemenceau's war-through-peace policy would, of course,
guarantee outright war sooner or later. The Allies would
justify their non-compliance with the diplomatic doubletalk
at the League of Nations. If a resolution came up to
implement the treaty, Clemenceau and the British could
always be counted on to exercise their veto power. Up until the
beginning of World War II the veto would be used and abused
by the Allies for the purpose of side-stepping their treaty obligations.While the Allies kept Germany in a total state of
disarmament, a handful of volunteers decided to face the
Communist legions Lenin was hurling against Germany.

CHAPTER LII

Soviet Republics in Germany

The Spartacists' electoral failure in January, 1919 followed
by Noske's military victory over them, was fairly general.
The extreme left had managed to win some 20 seats in the Weimar Assembly, a dozen
or so in Saxony, four in Wurttemberg and one in Hesse. "They
were looking east, waiting for the Soviet army to put them
into power," wrote Benoit-Méchin.Although they lacked the leadership of Liebknecht and
Luxemburg, they had grown in strength. Germany suffered a
famine of terrible proportions. Pregnant mothers were losing
their babies through sheer lack of food. The allies had
confiscated 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 railway cars with
the result that factories could no longer be supplied with
coal and raw material. Millions of returned servicemen were
out of work; wounded veterans were left to fend for
themselves. In Berlin there were 180,000 men out of work in
January, 1919; in February there were 240,000; in March
560,000 and in April more than one million. It was
inevitable that such misery and famine would throw the
masses into the hands of the agitators. The Allied
politicians were too consumed with hatred to see the Soviet
menace. Allied generals stationed in the occupied Rhineland
were, however, sufficiently alarmed to send graphic reports.General Plumer, commander of the British occupation forces
in Germany, wired this report to England on March 8, 1919:"Our troops cannot stand the sight of children dying from
hunger; I beseech you to send food to Germany."Appalling figures were reaching London: "At least 200I0 of
all German babies are stillborn and 40% who are born die
within a month." Nicolson's notes reflected his anguish:

I am very tired; I feel bad and my morale is low. What are
we doing about peace? What type of peace are we after? There
is a very somber telegram from Plumer. He begs us to send
food to Germany. He says our troops cannot stand to see
children dying of starvation any more. The observer from the
Peace Conference reports that people's complexion is yellow
through malnutrition and starvation.Even Churchill recognized the German plight:

This is a very sad story. The armistice conditions
prescribed that the blockade of Germany would continue.
However, at the Germans' request a clause was added that
stipulated, "The Allies and the United States" would
"consider sending food to Germany if it was necessary." This
clause was not implemented until January 16, 1919. On the
contrary, Germany's blockade was extended to the Baltic
ports, thus causing the famine to increase in Germany. I
hear some painful stories about the suffering of mothers and
children.

***

The "painful stories," that is, the death of 4007o of
Germany's babies, did not impress the Allies, however. The
British blockade remained as tight as ever. During the first
post-war winter more than one million German children
perished. The Allies were concerned only with forcing
Germany to sign the Versailles Treaty. With appalling
inhumanity the Allies calculated that the tightened blockade
would bring Germany to its knees at the conference table.The crowds in Berlin, Saxony and the streets of every city
in Germany did not understand this barbaric blackmail.
People were dying of starvation; there was no work and
inflation was melting the German mark. The Sparticists had
been trained in Moscow to exploit this national disaster.
The Eberts and the Scheidemanns, playing the liberal
bourgeois, were impotent to change anything. They offered no
hope, no plan except liberal verbiage. When people protested
they ordered the police to shoot at them. People were ready
to hear another voice.Clemenceau and Tardieu were blinded to the situation by
hatred while Lloyd George and Churchill were bound by the
strictures of British politics.Meanwhile, Lenin's ambassador in Berlin had been caught
redhanded distributing funds to the insurrectionists: "Joffe
was distributing money through Haase (a German Communist
deputy) in order to provoke the revolution." (Scheidemann,
The Collapse, p. 247).

***

Lenin's agent had been expelled from Germany but continued
to organize subversion through radio messages. Communist
insurrectionists were on the offensive throughout Germany.
Communist communes and local dictatorships were springing up
everywhere:"Every town and village was declared an autonomous republic
with responsibility for supplying food and even conducting
foreign affairs," wrote Scheidemann. Immediately an
establishment of Red commissars and petty bureaucrats put
themselves on the payroll of the taxpayers. "They had," said
Socialist minister Barth, "perverted the revolution to a
question of salary." They had become greedy stockholders of
the revolution.

"People appeared from everywhere," added Scheidemann, "to
claim their share of the revolutionary pie and jockey for
position."The German Communists had in fact invented the system of
Nomenklatura whereby a chosen few sponged on the majority of
the people. The system has been in force in the Soviet Union
ever since: 750,000 Nomenklatura members live in luxury off
250 million people.

***

The Leninist insurrectionists would, after establishing
their soviet republics, proceed to commit horrible massacres
in order to purge "undesirable" elements. The anti-Communist
volunteers had the choice of fighting back or being
slaughtered. The Leninists had released violent criminals
from jail and had enlisted them to perform the more grisly
atrocities. Germany had become a Communist jungle. For three
months unrelenting violence gripped the nation with fear.
The people were now at the mercy of Communist killers.
German patriots who could still think for themselves knew
they had to roll back the Bolsheviks before the final
meeting at Versailles. They had six months to reverse the
tide.The regional soviets would soon find their massacres
counterproductive.

***

No sooner had the Berlin Communists been crushed than Bremen
was put to the sword. The Communists took control of the
port in order to intercept any vessel that might contain
food. These vessels were mostly sent by a charitable
institution called the Hoover Commission. The delivery of
food meant the difference between life and death for
countless starving children. Yet it was official Communist
policy to exploit and compound starvation in order to start
the class war.Benoit-Méchin wrote:Since January 10, 1919, a hardly disguised dictatorship was
established (in Bremen). The Socialist treasury, as well as
the Socialist newspaper, was seized by the Communists. The
banks were held up and emptied of their contents. Returning
veterans were greeted with a hail of machine-gun fire. The
survivors were taken prisoner. Shipyards and docks were
sealed off with barbed wire. Squads of Red militia were
ordered to shoot anyone attempting to resume work. While the
country was dying of starvation the Hoover Commission ships,
loaded with food, were in the hands of the Communists.
(L'Armée allemande, pp. 185/186).The ports of Hamburg and Cuxhaven were similarly taken over
by the Communists. Seventy thousand workers were kept from
work by the Red terror.Noske was overwhelmed by numbers. His naval "Iron Brigade" numbered 1,600 men, his "Gerstenberg Division" numbered
1,900. He faced more than 100,000 Communist troops with his
3,500 men. Worse news was brought to Noske: Communist
agitators had taken over the huge Ruhr coalfields and were
"solidarizing" with Bremen and Hamburg. They would cut off
Germany's coal supplies.Noske advised the frightened Socialist government:"If order is not immediately restored in Bremem the
government can consider itself lost. It will have forfeited
all respect. It is better to risk anything than accept this
outrage." (Noske, Memoirs, p. 42).Against all odds Noske led his "Gerstenberg Division" of
1,900 men to Bremen on February 3, 1919. After three days of
ferocious fighting Noske managed to recapture Bremen and the
Communist agitators were put to death. The soviets of
Hamburg and Bremerhaven rushed reinforcements but were mowed
down by Noske's soldiers. Noske kept the initiative and
after a lightning attack forced Red Hamburg to capitulate.
The port was reopened and food finally got through. Three
thousand five hundred patriots had routed 100,000
Moscow-backed Communists.Noske had courage and leadership qualities, which the
Marxists lacked. The workers were amazed to see their Red
leaders run away at the first shot, leaving them as cannon
fodder.

***

While the fire was being extinguished in the North Sea
ports, the Ruhr and Westphalia were exploding in violence.
The Communists made the tactical error of chosing regional
revolutions instead of aiming at a national insurrection.
This gave Noske the chance to put down the insurrections one
by one with his outnumbered forces.The Communist-controlled union of the Ruhr demanded the
nationalization of the coal mines. The Weimar politicians
had, with characteristic cowardice, given in and made
concessions just short of communization. The Marxist
agitators were still not satisfied and organized strike
after strike: the miners were only allowed to work 17 days
out of 90.By February 6, 1919 the Communists were enforcing a general
strike for the whole region. Three days later they declared
the Ruhr "the independent North-West Republic."All coal shipments to the rest of Germany, which was
enduring one of the most severe winters on record, were
stopped. Once again Noske was called to liberate German soil
from the alien grip of Communism. His little contingent of
2,750 volunteers faced 150,000 Red militiamen armed to the
teeth. At the Hervest-Dorte town hall his men outflanked the
Red cannons and were poised for attack. The Reds announced
they would flood the coal mines if Noske attacked them. This
would mean the mines would be out of commission for years.
Noske kept his head and ceased all hostilities. He calculated that time was working to his advantage. Since the
Communists had cut off real communications, the Ruhr
population could not be supplied with food. The general
strike had cost the workers more than 100 million marks. In
a few weeks they had lost the capacity to buy food even at
black market rates.Noske's right-hand man, General von Watter, felt the wives
and children of the miners would help bring sanity back. He
negotiated directly with the men: they would work the mines
and resume coal shipments in exchange for food. Noske
avoided a bloodbath by using psychology.

***

No sooner had the Ruhr crisis been averted than Westphalia
fell into the hands of Killian, the Jewish Bolshevik
dictator. Operating from the city of Halle, Killian seized
50,000 rifles, a million rounds of ammunition and a number
of machine guns from the old army depot. His "Revolutionary
Council" enforced a general strike and jailed all railway
workers. The schools, the newspapers, the utilities and
medical services were shut down. Even the sanitation workers
were ordered not to work, which left the town in a state of
filth and squalor. Noske asked General Maercker to beat back
this new insurrection with 3,500 volunteers.

***

Maercker approached the town of Gotha, which had just
seceded from Germany, on March 1, 1919. The Communists
derailed one of his trains and savagely massacred the
wounded. The officers were mutilated beyond recognition,
dragged through the streets and publicly thrown in the River
Saale, where they drowned. Maercker just escaped with his
life.The Communists had converted the town's theater into an
impregnable fortress. Maercker was trying to avoid further
bloodshed and sent a truce emissary, Colonel von Kluwer, to
negotiate with the "Revolutionary Council." Before he could
talk the Communists seized him, broke his jaw and most of
his ribs. A screaming Communist mob dragged him through the
same streets his fellow officers had been dragged the day
before. With blood gushing from his multiple wounds, he was
thrown into the Saale River. Still alive, he desperately
attempted to swim ashore. Each time the Communists kicked
him back into the water. Finally they finished him off with bullets.The outrage perpetrated on Colonel von Kluwer convinced
Maercker that negotiations were now out of the question. He
sent his best soldiers to clear the streets. One hundred
twenty-three Communists were killed; Maercker lost seven
men. The Communists panicked and went on a looting rampage.
Maercker took 500 of them prisoners. Within 72 hours the Red
militias were routed and made illegal. Maercker restored
order by March 7.

Bremen, Westphalia and Halle had been retaken. The Soviet
agents in Berlin were seething over this triple blow. They
decided to launch another insurrection in Berlin itself. The
professional agitators spread the word: "Workers!
Proletarians! These are our orders: absolute discipline!
Cold- blooded calm! Iron will! Everybody prepare to fight!"
The Communists declared a general strike through a new
front, the "workers' councils."This would be the fourth revolution in four months. Now
Noske was on his own ground and he would handle the
Communists himself. He asked for and received full power to quell the insurrection. On the
first night the communists seized the police stations and looted the stores.On March 4, 1919 Noske stormed the Red stronghold in
Spandau. For 20 hours the fighting raged in the streets of the Spandau
district. Noske won the battle there but still had to face
navy mutineers from Bremen and Hamburg, who had been in
Berlin since the middle of November, 1918. They had ample
ammunition and were operating from the exits of Berlin's
subway. Dislodged from their guns and grenades, they
retreated to the Red stronghold of Marstall, which became
the target of intensive fire. A few hours later, they raised the white flag.The second and more formidable stronghold was the "Volksmarinehaus." Maercker gathered a small air squadron to
drop naval tropedoes on the fortress. The wall were breached
and Noske sent in his men. Inside they found 126 machine
guns, 5,000 additional guns and rifles and two heavy artillery pieces.For another 50 hours ferocious fighting would take place in
practically every street of Berlin. Gradually Noske was closing in on
the last and main bastion of Communism in Berlin:
Lichtenberg.

***

The Communists had terrorized the working-class district of
Lichtenberg after seizing the police building and other
public offices along with 80 policemen and government
soldiers. The local newspapers were also seized, which seems
to have infuriated the other Berlin newspapers. There were
headlines announcing that all 80 policemen and soldiers had
been massacred, which was officially confirmed by the
interior minister. The news sent a shock wave through an
already shock-proof Berlin. Noske declared by means of
posters that anyone caught with weapons would be shot immediately.
The Government Guard went further: "Any individual caught with arms in his house
will be shot on the spot." The news of the massacre was in that case inaccurate: there
had only five policemen assassinated. So many massacres had taken
place in the previous weeks that the press headlines had
been accepted at face value. Within hours hundreds of
Communists would be killed. There would also be heavy government casualties. By March 11, 1919 the
Communist force of 10,000 men had dwindled to 4,000. At last
the Communist high command in the Lichtenberg town hall
fell; the last insurrectionists were mowed down by machine gun. The Red commissar Dorrenbach managed to
escape, but was killed a month later.The fourth Bolshevik uprising had been the most murderous:
10,400 civilians were killed and wounded. It was 10,400 too
many but it would have been 100,000 if the Bolsheviks had
conquered Berlin as they did Moscow. The following day Noske
addressed the Reichstag in Weimar: "For one week the battle raged in all its horror. I can tell you that
the insurrection has been crushed!"If the Communists had failed it was not because they lacked
fighters. They were never short of men. Some of the people
they enlisted fought with courage. They were torn by hunger
and poverty, convinced they were fighting the right war. The
dangers for Germany and Europe were immense. The crowds,
thirsting for justice, were badly let down by their Marxist
leaders. From Liebknecht to Thalmann in 1933 the failure of
Red leadership in Germamy was constant. Had there been a
German Lenin or even a German Trotsky, Clemenceau would have
ended his career in Siberia.

***

The insurrection may have been crushed in Berlin but
Communist uprisings continued in other parts of Germanmy.
Three weeks after Berlin, Magdeburg and Braunschweig were in
the throes of insurrection. On April 2, 1919 a Communist
force of 2,000 men took over Magdeburg and declared
themselves and the city a Soviet republic. They broke all
relations with the German government and announced their
alliance with Moscow.The Socialists, formerly so friendly with the Communists,
found themselves being beaten up and thrown out of windows.
Once more they bleated for Noske to come and save them.
Socialist politicians and bureaucrats were imprisoned, while
convicted criminals were set free. Once again food stores
were looted and factories closed, including those of the
giant industrial cartel Krupp. The Reds took a federal
minister, a general and a number of officers as hostages, liable to be shot at
any time. Noske, exasperated, roared that he would "never
tolerate such practices or the dismemberment of Germany."On April 12 he delivered an ultimatum to the Soviet Republic
of Magdeburg to surrender.

***

Noske entrusted Maercker to implement the ultimatum. Far
from surrendering the insurrectionists waged a furious
battle against the government forces, killing 37 men. Maercker counterattacked
with great speed and managed to free the hostages. Another
Leninist regime was put down and a patriotic government was
put in place.General von Kleist, the freed hostage, reviewed the troops
in Magdeburg the next day. Maercker had organized the parade
but had to leave in a hurry for the Braunschweig region,
where a Jewish tailor called Merges had overthrown the
government and had become the Bolshevik dictator of
Braunschweig. He had enlisted the Kiel mutineers, who were
living in the ducal palace, as his bodyguards. Merges had
armed the Communists troops with large quantities of weapons
seized in government arsenals and claimed he was forming
"the embryo of a powerful Red army." He had broken with the
central government, closed down the railways, stopped food
supplies and had just declared that Braunschweig was now
part of the Communist Third International, run by Moscow.Maercker probed the surroundings with minor skirmishing
ensuing. Some 30 Communists were killed and 70 taken
prisoner. Maercker encircled the city. His troops were
ordered to give no quarter to all who resisted. Suddenly,
Maercker was confronted by an extraordinary spectacle: a
huge crowd was running in his direction, with cries of joy
and thanks addressed to their liberators. The people of
Braunschweig had overun the Red militias and had come to
greet Maercker and his men to the hymn of Deutschland über
Alles. It was Easter Day. The day of resurrection was
symbolic for Braunschweig. Maercker recalled: "The crowd was
so thick that I could hardly proceed; my horse was sinking
in an avalanche of flowers." Maercker entered Braunschweig
with the band leading the way.

***

There was the proof. In Germany, as in Russia, the
revolution was run by Jewish agitators determined to impose
Communism by force on the unwilling majority. Violence,
terror and Dark Age barbarism were their modus operandi, but
at the first opportunity people would throw off the Marxist
yoke.Braunschweig's Red commissars fled the popular wrath while
the rank and file chose surrender. Maercker wisely decided
on a show of leniency: "I judge it opportune to make their
detention as light as possible." He was now free to look to
Bavaria, which had become a soviet republic under the
dictatorship of three Jews: Leviné, Levien, and Axelrod,
sent by Lenin from Moscow. There was also the matter of a
new soviet republic that had just sprung up in Hungary.

CHAPTER LIII

The Communists in Budapest

On March 12, 1919 power in Hungary fell into the hands of
another Soviet agent, Bela Kun, likewise a Communist Jew.
Lenin had earmarked Hungary as the east central European
springboard for Bolshevism.This time the Allies took notice. It mattered little to them
when the Communists massacred Germans but it did matter when
east central Europe was being interfered with. The Allies regarded it as their
preserve and that of their local allies the Czechs, the
Romanians, and the Serbians.Clemenceau, however, saw the opportunity to negotiate with
the new Marxist potentate from the Danube and his ambassador
in Vienna to invite him to Paris. Wilson, Lloyd George, and
Clemenceau decided to send a special delegation to Budapest
to deliver the invitation officially. The mission was to be headed by South African Prime Minister
Smuts who traveled by private train to Budapest.Thus a luxury train would be crossing a devasted Europe of
200 million starving people to pay homage to the
sallow-skinned Jewish tyrant of Bolshevik Hungary. Harold
Nicolson, who was assigned to this mission, gave this
amazing report from the time they arrived in Vienna where
the delegation was to wait for a Communist delegate to give them
permission to enter Hungary:

I go to the Bolshevik headquarters. It is rather difficult
to make them understand who I am and what I want. The place
is crowded with people who want to obtain passports. Most of
them are Jews fighting to get to Budapest... Finally I am
taken upstairs to the commissar, as he is called around
here. He is a Galician Jew raised in the United States. He
telephones Budapest and says: "It's O.K. Bela Kun will be
glad to see you."

The next morning the delegation arrived in Budapest as the
same time as 1,500 "fanatics" who had left Vienna to join
Bela's Red guards. Bela Kun appeared on the platform:

He is a little man of about thirty, his face is waxy and
puffy, his lips are soft and wet, his head is shaven, his
eyes are cunning and distrustful. It is the face of a
sulking and insecure criminal. He is accompanied by a greasy
little Jew clad in a moth-eaten fur coat and wearing a dirty
green tie; it's his foreign minister. We start talking but his German is difficult to
follow because it is mixed with Galician and Magyar. They
start to propound on what Bolshevism will mean for Central
Europe: Work and happiness for all, free education, doctors,
George Bernard Shaw, suburban gardens, lots of music and the
triumph of the machine. I asked them what machine? He
gestures vaguely in a collective embrace of all the world's
machines.

***

Bela Kun left and Nicolson started to take photographs.

Fortunately, Bela Kun is leaving before my patience gets
completely exhausted. I accompany him back to the entrance
of the station. The Red Guards do not salute him. He stands
still and looks. The engine driver from a local train gets
down and walks toward Bela Kun. He says something I do not
understand. Kun answers him in Magyar, the equivalent of,
"Certainly, comrade," and gives him the cigarette he was
smoking. The engine driver then picks up another cigarette,
lights it with the one he had received from Kun. He then
returns to his locomotive proudly puffing his comradely
cigarette. Bela Kun turns his beady pink eyes in my
direction to observe if I have been impressed with this
proletarian scene.

Nicolson summarized the meeting: "Bela Kun suggests we
arrange a conference in Vienna or Prague between the
successor-states. Smuts wants him to come to Paris."Here was the prime minister of a British dominion inviting
the Jewish tyrant of a communized country to come and
negotiate in Paris, while not a single statesman had been
called to express the needs of 60 million Germans.

***

Neither Smuts nor anyone else in the luxury train that
brought the delegation to Budapest had the slightest idea of
what was going on in Hungary under Bela Kun's dictatorship.Nicolson managed to drag Smuts along on a tour of Budapest
for which authorization had to be sought:

Almost all the shops are closed. The city is unclean. Rain
is falling on people who are emaciated and in rags. Squads
of red guards move around holding coat-hangers with various
gifts. We met three or four of these squads of about 15 to
20 men armed with bayonets and carrying coat-hangers, stolen
in some restaurant. If they find an open shop they go in and
help themselves to the "gifts" they fancy, which they then
hang on the coat-hangers: boots, sausages and red linen. All
this is soaked with the rain. The sadness and poverty is striking.

When Nicholson and Smuts returned to the train there was a
power failure, which plunged everybody into darkness. Bela
Kun returned to the station: I managed to make him sign a paper where he promised to
release all the English subjects he had put in jail. Kun appears suspicious and
morose as well as fearful. Smuts speaks to him as if he were
royalty.The Swiss and Spanish consuls inform us that Bela Kun's
actions were far from moderate. To pretend otherwise would
be absurd. The prisons are overfilled with people. The Red guards are threatening and a
massacre is feared.Bela Kun returned the next day: he arrived at ten o'clock.Smuts hands over the draft of an agreement stipulating the
occupation by the great powers of a neutral zone between
Romania and Hungary. If he agrees the blockade will be
lifted. It is clear that Bela Kun is dying to accept. The
signing of such a document would imply the official
recognition of his government. He badly wants to agree but
he is suspicious and fearful. Grabbing the document he
leaves us, saying he has to consult with his Cabinet, which actually means Moscow. He promises us an answer by
seven in the evening.

***

In the afternoon a reception was to be given to the Smuts
delegation at the Hungaria Hotel:

Bela Kun wishes us to have afternoon tea there. It is
embarrassing as I do not think the general would like us to
go into a hotel. But they look so upset when we refuse that
we accept the invitation. We realize as soon as we get into
the hotel that everything had been carefully arranged in
order to impress us. The lobby is full of people around
little tables drinking coffee and lemonade. A band is
playing Hungarian tunes. Everything is designed to show us
that Budapest remains, despite Bolshevism, the merriest city
in Europe. However, two serious mistakes have been made:
first, each door is guarded by armed Red guards and,
secondly, they forgot to tell the people around the little
tables they were supposed to talk among themselves. It is
very strange. I do not realize immediately what is wrong. It
is a normal sight to see people having afternoon tea in a
hotel, but there is something fantastic and unreal: no one
is talking; everybody is sipping their lemonade in total
silence. If one looks at these people one sees fear and an
appeal for help as intense as it is silent. When they lower
their eyes, the deadly silence continues except for the
playing of violins under the watch of armed guards. It is
quite evident that this collection of silent beings had been
taken out of jail for the afternoon just to fill the lobby. I shudder. We leave as soon as possible. While we
walk to the door, silent glances follow us.

***

Bela Kun was to come back a fourth time to carry on the
negotiations. Smuts had finally reached a fomula whereby Kun
would be invited to Paris to join the peace conference.
Paris, however, would not greet Bela Kun. The Hungarians had
had more than enough of Bolshevism and Bela Kun and had called in Romanian troops to help them kick out
their oppressors. Bela Kun was run out of town, never to
reappear.The Allies' exceptional display of affection towards Bela
Kun was not unrelated to his Jewishness. Versailles was a
kind of confidential Sanhedrin gathering where Bela Kun was
eagerly awaited. Lenin's three Jewish dictators of Bavaria
(Leviné, Levien, and Axelrod) had similarly been wooed and
feted by Clemenceau and the Allies all the while they were
massacring defenseless German civilians.Surrounded and invaded by enemies, the hard core of Germany
was determined to resist. Noske was on his way to Bavaria.

CHAPTER LIV

Germany Crushes Communism

From April 26 to May 3, 1919," wrote Benoist-Méchin, "all Germany held its breath, with all eyes on Bavaria." Leviné
and Levien had just signed an alliance, with their fellow
tyrant Bela Kun, all of whom were under the control of
Lenin. The Munich-Budapest Bolshevik axis was going to cut
Europe in half.For six months Bavaria had been in the hands of a series of
demented Jews like Eisner and cold-blooded terrorists like
Leviné and Levien, sent by Lenin from Moscow. During the
night of April 6 these aliens had proclaimed Bavaria a
soviet republic to cries of "Los vom Reich!" ("Out of the
Reich!"). This was intolerable to any German. Bloodshed
seemed inevitable.For the first time since the end of the war there would be a
confrontation of major forces, amounting to some 64,000
combatants. The Marxist- Leninists of Bavaria, in power for
six months, had had the time to organize a Red army of
64,000 well-armed men. The odds did not favor Noske's 4,000.

***

The Communist International which supervised Soviet Bavaria
was entirely composed of Jews. This point should never be
foregotten when one studies the evolution of National
Socialism. Jewish involvement in directing the Bolshevik
revolutions in Germany had been overwhelming and constant.
The massacres and the bloodshed that had almost destroyed
Germany in 1918 and 1919 were organized and directed by
Jews.It was a Frenchman of impeccable democratic credentials, not
an "anti- Semitic" German, who wrote these remarkable lines:Crowds waving red flags mount an assault against the
government in the name of class war. They try to crush the
last patriotic instincts. But these crowds do not act
spontaneously. They are led by a legion of militants and
agitators. And who are these agitators? In Berlin, Landsberg
and Haase, Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg; in Munich, Kurt
Eisner, Lipp and Landauer, Toiler, Leviné and Levien; in the
Ruhr, Markus and Levinson; in Magdeburg, Brandeis; in
Dresden, Lipinsky, Geyer and Fleissner; in Bremerhaven and Kiel, Grunewald and Kohn; in the Palatinate,
Lilienthal and Heine. All these people were Jews.
(Benoist-Méchin, L'Armée allemande, vol. II, p. 216)That these people were traitors to Germany and had almost
delivered it to Lenin at the end of 1918 and the beginning
of 1919 were facts of history. There is nothing
"anti-Semitic" in recognizing this fact: a historical
explanation for the anti-Jewish reaction experienced by the
near totality of the German people.

***

Lenin spared no expense in bolstering Soviet Bavaria. It was
his dagger in the heart of Europe and arms were pouring in.
The Red militias had conscripted thousands of former Russian
prisoners who had been freed by the German government. The
terrified socialist president of Bavaria had fled in panic
with his entire cabinet, leaving his guards to be massacred
by the Communists.Leviné, Levien and Axelrod, the Red dictators of Bavaria,
set up a system of punishment and reward. The 20,000 Red
militiamen were paid 25 times more than other troops; they
cost a half million marks per day. The ordinary people in
Munich were starving; for them bread had disappeared.
Everywhere one could hear the firing squads: salvoes
crackled in the prison courtyards; the victims' bodies were
left to rot in the open.Meanwhile the Communist warlords were living it up at the
Wittelsbach Palace: "There is an incessant coming and going
of people, some all dressed up and others in rags. The
champagne never stops flowing and orgies last until dawn.
The government picks up the tab for it all."
(Benoist-Méchin, L'Armée allemande, vol. II, p. 285)Money was never a problem. The finance commissar, a
25-year-old former bank clerk, just printed more notes.
Whenever money was needed to pay his private army of
personal bodyguards, he just went to the city's banks and
emptied out the private safe deposit boxes of their
contents, which he then distributed.

***

Bavarian President Hoffmann contemplated the looting,
massacres and adequate weapons and training. Hoffmann knew
Noske was the only man capable of confronting the Bolshevik
forces, but he was reluctant to ask for thousand indecisive
men, but these troops were poorly armed and relied on Berlin
for their paychecks. He needed ten times as many troops,
with adequate weapons and training. Hoffman knew Noske was
the only man capable of confronting the Bolshevik forces,
but he was reluctant to ask for his help, because this would
be an admission of his dependence on Berlin.

Like Ebert in 1918, he kept changing his mind. Finally, he
decided to take on the Red army by himself. On April 16,
1919 he advanced to within 35 miles of Munich, but near
Dachau his troops were promptly routed.After this disaster Hoffmann let Noske take the initiative.
As Reichwehr minister, Noske managed to raise a force of
30,000 men. Many former officers rushed to join as privates.
He positioned his troops in Thuringia, on the Bavarian
border.A 60,000-man Soviet army awaited them.

***

On April 28, Noske began a systematic campaign of
encirclement. The "Russians," as Lenin's three Jewish
dictators were known, began to panic. As Noske's noose
tightened, Levien and Axelrod fled to Austria, while Leviné
went underground in Munich. Only Red Army Commissar Eglhofer
remained at his post. He took more than a hundred of the
most prominent citizens of Munich hostage; a number of them,
including seven members of the racial-nationalist
Thulegesellschaft, were massacred in a gymnasium.This massacre would trigger severe reprisals. Noske reached
Starnberg; twenty-one Communists were taken prisoner and
immediately executed. The next day the ring had closed to
within 15 kilometers of Munich. Noske hurled his forces
right into the city, where they linked up with students and
veterans who had risen against the Communists. His troops
attacked Communist strongholds at the railway station and
the Palace of Justice. The last bastion of Bolshevism, the
railway station, finally fell, and with it the Soviet
Republic of Bavaria.

***

The Communists paid a very high price. They were
exterminated by the hundreds by their Socialist brothers.
Noske was a Socialist minister; so were Ebert and
Scheidemann. It was they who had overthrown the imperial
government on November 9, 1918, without any consultation
with the German people. Ebert and Scheidemann, who had
trembled at the sight of their coalition partners in action,
now ordered terrible reprisals in Berlin, Bremen, Magdeburg,
Braunschweig, and Munich. In Berlin alone more than 10,000
people were put to death: it was Socialist terror versus
Communist terror. But it was in Munich that the reprisals
were the most sweeping. Red militiamen were executed by the
hundreds, as were other Communist troops. Commissar Eglhofer
was executed on the spot. The Jewish dictator Leviné, who
had gone underground, was unearthed, court- martialed, and
shot.Dead was also the old Bavarian system. Munich would from now
on be controlled by Berlin. There would be no more Bavarian
army or flag.

Bavarian soldiers would swear allegiance to the German
Constitution, Noske's iron fist had crushed separatism along
with Communism.

***

The last two centers of insurrection were Dresden and
Leipzig. On November 7 the Communists had risen in Dresden,
Saxony. On November 10 they ousted King Frederick Augustus
II and formed a coalition government with the Socialists.
Unlike those elsewhere in Germany the January, 1919
elections had been favorable to the Communists, who had
obtained 145,000 votes to the SPD's 45,000. The people of
Saxony, however, had refused to go along with strikes
ordered by the commissars. The Red guards retaliated
ruthlessly, chasing workers away from factories at gunpoint.
On March 10, an absolute Marxist dictatorship was declared
and the massacres of "anti-state" people began.The murder of Reich Minister Neuring, who was visiting
Dresden on government business, was particularly gruesome.
On April 12, a mob of Communists burst into the minister's
office to the cries of "Throw the dog into the river."
Within seconds he was badly beaten.The mob then dragged the minister, bleeding profusely,
through the streets toward the Augustus Bridge. He was
thrown into the Elbe River. The desperate man tried to swim
to the shore. Just as he reached ground he was shot to
death.

***

Neuring's murder belied the charge that violence was a
right-wing monopoly. In Dresden the murderers and the
murdered were all of the left. The pink Socialist left of
Dresden and Leipzig were quick to call Noske, a Socialist
minister, to do away with their Red coalition partners.The Bolsheviks had at their disposal 25,000 Red guards, 400
marines from Kiel and 20,000 armed workers. The news of the
Munich debacle and the mass execution of Communists was most
perturbing to the Saxon insurrectionists.General Maercker was ordered to march on Leipzig in May. He
was out-numbered five to one but he was convinced he could
benefit from the fear that by now was gripping the
Communists. As a competent tactician he used a military
leader's two main assets: secrecy and strategy. The
destination of his troops and materiel convoys was not even
communicated to the railway personnel. In the middle of the
night of May 10, Maercker's men arrived at the Leipzig
central station. They fanned out across the city and took
over. There was practically no resistance; only two were
wounded. The Bolshevik commissars and agitators were
arrested at the royal palaces and thrown into jail.

***

Eight days later work had resumed everywhere. After six
months of Communist dictatorship the people organized a huge
parade to celebrate their deliverance.The pure sound of trumpets and the high-flying flags were
proof there were still soldiers in Germany. Thus, General
Maercker had concluded the national reconquest of Germany
just as it was about to perish.

CHAPTER LV

The Alsace-Lorraine Booty

The first territory to be amputated from Germany at the
Versailles treaty would be "Alsace-Lorraine"
(Elsass-Lothringen). It had been recovered by Germany in 1871 but Germanization had not been
forced on its inhabitants. The choice had been left to them
to remain French if the idea of joining the German empire
did not appeal to them. The results were in favor of
Germany: less than one-fifth wanted to remain citizens of
the French republic. Even the anti-German Tardieu had to
recognize:"Three hundred sixty thousand inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine
(against 2 million) declared their wish to remain French."The position was the same in 1914. Men from Alsace-Lorraine
had not flooded the recruitment centers of Poincaré: Only
14,000 had volunteered to serve the French government-not
even enough for a division. The rest of the population had
served with distinction in the German army from 1914 to
1918. The most famous of them was Captain Schumann, who was
to become after World War II the founder of a unified
Europe, this time as a French citizen. He would be backed by
a fellow former German, from the Tyrol, Alcide de Gasperi,
now an Italian citizen, and fellow World War 1 German
combatant Konrad Adenauer.

***

Poincaré had made Alsace-Lorraine the base of his political
career. He had made of it an emotionally charged issue,
devoid of reason or knowledge. To "recapture"
Alsace-Lorraine he had sent 11/2 million young Frenchmen
into the hell of the Western Front to be slaughtered. He was
now determined to grab these German lands regardless of
their history or the people's wishes.How would Poincaré respect the terms of the armistice?Wilson's Fourteen Points had never mentioned the "wrongs to
be righted" in connection with Alsace-Lorraine. Here is what
was mentioned somewhat ambiguously, as reported by the
American delegate, Dr. Homer Haskins (What Did Happen, p.
12):

The Allies had accepted the Fourteen Points as the basis for
peace. The points did stipulate the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine as
well as the restoration of Poland but also condemned the
exchanges of population and their transfer from one
country's rule to another without their consent. At the same
time the points proclaimed the right of people to
self-determination.

The "de-annexation" or
"re-annexation" of Alsace-Lorraine should therefore have been preceded by a
plebiscite.Clemenceau and Poincaré entered Strasbourg as victors with
bands playing and flags flying. People came out to see the
victors and watch the parade. Clememceau and Poincaré
shouted at the sight of the crowds: "The plebiscite had been
decided."

The British were concerned, as early as 1917, about French
claims to Alsace-Lorraine for one reason. The German will to
continue the war would harden: "If in the matter of
Alsace-Lorraine the Allies persist in their present attitude
the war will not end in 1917 or 1918." (Philip Snowden,
1917)During the same year Lloyd George had refused to attend a
pro-Alsatian banquet in London for fear of compromising
himself:"On the 14th of July, 1917 Lloyd George did not believe the
question was clear enough in the minds of his fellow
citizens to allow him to attend a banquet to which he had
been invited by Alsace-Lorraine (French) representatives."
(Tardieu, Peace, p. 264)Tardieu also touched on the American position: "For the
majority of Americans the question of Alsace-Lorraine
remained misunderstood. For them it was a country where
people spoke German and that was enough. How many times have
the Americans told me of their hope that France should be
satisfied with an independent and neutral Alsace-Lorraine."
(Tardieu, Peace, p. 265)Tardieu recalled a conversation he had had with Walter
Lippmann, a member of an official "board of inquiry for
peace" in August, 1917: "The idea of a plebiscite was so
deeply rooted in his mind, the notion of a French
Alsace-Lorraine was so foreign to him, that he had invented
a system of fragmented voting, cutting up the provinces in a
dozen parcels."Tardieu himself would not hesitate to impose this system of
fragmented voting on Silesia in 1919 in order to satisfy the
claims of Polish politicians who were allied to the French
government.Tardieu had mounted a gigantic campaign in the United States
to change public opinion. For more than 15,000 meetings,
wounded soldiers would be exhibited to attract sympathy for
"the captive provinces." The appointed head of this
"Alsatian" lobby was a Jewish publicist called Daniel
Blumenthal, who was supposed to move the Houses and Baruchs
to Tardieu's viewpoint.

The campaign bore fruit. On January 8, 1918 Wilson, still as
confused as ever, announced: "The wrong Prussia has done to
France in relation to Alsace-Lorraine must be redressed in
order that peace can be assured for the benefit of all."Although the term "redressed" was remarkably vague, Tardieu
welcomed the statement: "Of all the Allies' positions on
this essential matter this has been the clearest and most
comprehensive."Tardieu obviously did not interpret "for the benefit of all"
to include the Germans.

***

If Wilson and the American people did not grasp the
complexities of Alsace-Lorraine it was because none of the
French politicians would reveal the secret agreements they
made with Russia in March, 1917, just before America joined
the war.These agreements recognized all French claims to
Alsace-Lorraine, both sides of the Rhine, and even farther
into Germany if Poincaré so desired.Clemenceau's shout that "the plebiscite had been decided"
without recourse to the ballot box had upset the Allies.
They insisted the matter be dealt with by a three-member
committee. Tardieu had great difficulty selling his thesis
of a "plebiscite without a plebiscite." "I thought our claim
to Alsace-Lorraine would not be the subject of debate, and
that the solution was obvious," he wrote. (Tardieu, Peace,
p. 269)But for the other members the solution was not "obvious."Finally the Allies gave up, acknowledging the fact that the
French government had made their claim to Alsace-Lorraine a
fait accompli.The Allies' disagreement with the French government was
covered up in the treaty by a vague declaration stating that
the two provinces "had been reintegrated under French
sovereignty."

***

What about the German people of Alsace-Lorraine? Would their
right to choose be respected? Would their right to remain on
their land be guaranteed? There would be no question of it.
The French government would recognize no such rights:In all other cases the rule had been the right to choose to
the benefit of the relinquishing state. But we have refused
and eliminated that procedure. There is no right to choose
in Alsace-Lorraine to the benefit of Germans. This right
belongs to the French government, which can, by virtue of
the treaty and the exercise of its restored sovereignty,
confer French status only on real Alsace-Lorrainers
recognized as such by us. (Tardieu, Peace, p. 271)French politicians would excel all greed in taking
Alsace-Lorraine thanks to this exception to the rule.

Article 254 of the treaty established that the value of all
public assets relinquished by Germany in Alsace-Lorraine
should be carried to its credit by the reparations
commission. French politicians demanded categorically that
Article 254 could not apply to Alsace-Lorraine."I demanded and obtained," bragged Tardieu, "that in spite
of this formal article, despite such enormous (German)
government assets as the railways, the French government
will pay nothing."The German iron ore mines alone had enormous value. They
represented 75010 of Germany's total production just before
the war. But the seizure of German public assets would also
extend to the private assets of ordinary German citizens.
They would lose their businesses and any property they had
in the region."We had our right to seize all the assets of German citizens
recognized. We now had the right to prohibit all German
participation in private enterprises in the public interest
such as mines, utility companies, etc., as well as the right
to cancel all German interests in the exploitation of
potassium."German potassium mining ranked second in the world.Never before in modern history had private citizens been
stripped of all their assets and belongings by the victors
without the slightest compensation. The rapine outraged many
Allied delegates.

***

As if this were not enough, Tardieu established a system of
customs without reciprocity for Germany. He enumerated the
other spoils of victory:

We would be guaranteed to receive for 10 years and at the
same tariffs as the Germans the electricity produced on the
German side of the Rhine. We would have total ownership of
the hydraulic energy of the Rhine bordering Alsace. We would
have the right to annul private contracts, which is exactly
the opposite of the general rules fixed in part 10 of the
treaty. We would also maintain on German territory the
rights of Alsace-Lorrainers ranging from industrial property
to literary and artistic.

The British delegate Maynard Keynes described the situation
precisely:

For more than 50 years Alsace-Lorraine was part of the
German empire-a considerable majority of its population
speaks German. The country has been the center of some of
the most important economic enterprises of Germany.
Nevertheless, the property of Germans who resided in
Alsace-Lorraine or who had invested in its industry is
entirely in the hands of the French government without any
compensation for them. The French government is authorized
to expropriate without indemnity the German citizens and the
German companies respectively residing and located in
Alsace-Lorraine.The national, provincial, municipal assets-including the
railways and rolling stock-went to France without indemnity. But while
the properties were seized, commitments taken on their
behalf, such as public loans, remained the liability of
Germany. Thus the two provinces were freed and discharged,
under French rule, of their debts before and during the war.

In short, all the assets of Alsace-Lorraine, representing 50
years of German work and investment, were seized without
indemnity. Each German of Alsace was dispossessed of
everything but his debt.And yet there was more.The French delegates claimed control of the German port of
Kehl on the German side of the Rhine in the state of Baden.
They feared Kehl would compete with Strasbourg, which they
had just acquired. Again the Allies were astonished by such
flagrant demands: it took five days before the French
delegates could put Kehl in their knapsack. Wrote Tardieu:

If Kehl, once the peace is signed, were free to administer
itself, Strasbourg would definitively be strangled. We asked
that for a number of years Strasbourg had the time to
organize and for that purpose the two ports should be under
the same administration. There were many objections: Kehl
was a German port and should not be admininistered by a
French director. (Peace, p. 273)

Finally, Kehl was submitted to French administration.

***

The allies had thought for a moment that the new masters of
Alsace- Lorraine would be satisfied and their greed
quenched.But Alsace-Lorraine had only been an appetizer. Victory over
Germany meant for the French politicians the opportunity for
vengeance and profit. Alsace-Lorraine had been on the
politicians' platforms for 50 years. It was therefore normal
for them that Germany be made to suffer to the maximum, and
that they should profit to the utmost.After Alsace-Lorraine would come the main courses: Saarland
and Rhineland. There would be side-dishes in Belgium,
Luxembourg and even and attempt to spill over into Holland.All these claims had been launcehd melodramatically by
Victor Hugo in 1871 at the Bordeaux Assembly, where he
lamented the "loss" of Alsace- Lorraine: "Yes, the day will
come when France will rise up. In a powerful thrust she will
reconquer Strasbourg and Metz. Only these two cities? No,
she will take Cologne, Mainz, Coblenz and Trier."French politicians had fed on these lines since 1871 and
were waiting for the "divine minute," in the words of
Poincaré. 1919 appeared to be that "divine minute."

CHAPTER LVI

The Rape of Saarland

The French politicians, heirs to the bloody Revolution of
1789, had I never forgotten or got over the fact that the
German Rhineland had been occupied by revolutionary troops
for a few years. In 1814 the German Rhineland was liberated
and returned to Germany.The French revolutionaries and Napoleon had occupied the
Rhineland for 15 years out of 2,000 years. Yet this brief
period of history was sufficient for all French socialists
from 1789 to 1919 to consider that part of Germany as
irrevocably theirs. Generations of political campaigners
whipped voters into a frenzy for the return of the "lost
territories."In the winter of 1919 the heirs to Robespierre and Danton
demanded the "return" of the German province of Saarland to
the Republic of France, the "sacred heritage" the
revolutionary cut-throats had invaded.While they were mass-murdering their countrymen in France,
the Revolutionary apostles of terror had invaded the
southern part of Saarland in 1792, 1793, and 1794 with equal
violence. The invasion had spread to Belgium and Holland
until the entire Rhineland had been conquered.

***

The revolutionaries who had imposed their despotism on
France with unparalleled terror had also imposed their
domination of other lands with force and violence.The revolutionary propaganda was as cunning as it was
hypocritical. They had local agents or their own bureaucrats
pass motions of support for the invaders everywhere. These
motions gave the appearance of a popular vote in favor of
revolutionary occupation. Belgian archives showed how so-
called plebiscites in favor of annexation with the
revolutionary regime were manufactured: Only 1 or 2% voted
against it. The other 98% who refused to go along with such
a travesty were then considered to be in favor of the
occupation. Based on the premise, "Those who say nothing
give consent," the revolutionaries acquired vast chunks of
European territory, from Hamburg to the Adriatic, with the
apparent enthusiastic support of the local populations.

Tardieu was merely carrying on the war of "liberation" his
revolutionary predecessors had started in 1789. The
Communistic purpose of these latterday guillotine
revolutionaries was cloaked in lachrymose rhetoric and
pseudo-patriotism in order to generate emotions among
ordinary French people for the "return of all long-lost
Frenchmen."

***

When Robespierre's favorite officer, Napoleon Bonaparte,
became emperor of France the benefit of the newly acquired
lands was felt in his armies. The majority of his generals
came from the north and displayed the Germanic qualities
that enabled him to perform his epic conquests and battles.Historically the Germanic northerners had shown outstanding
military qualities. The Flemish conquered Ceuta and Tangiers
for the king of Spain. Brabant knights saved central Europe
from the Turks in the early 1600's. The Brothers of the
Sword and the Teutonic Knights protected Europe from the
Mongol invasions.It was Germanic blood that provided for the defense of
Europe as well as its leading military chiefs. One thousand
two hundred out of Napoleon's 2,000 generals were of
Germanic blood. It is doubtful that without them he could
have conquered Europe.

***

While Napoleon's Germanic generals were distinguishing
themselves on the battlefields, his bureaucracy, the same
which had slaughtered so many French people, was ruthlessly
suppressing the aspirations of the conquered peoples. In
Belgium for instance, André le Poigne, an autonomist leader,
was beheaded and, in proper revolutionary fashion, his head
paraded on top of a spike in the center of Brussels.Although Belgium had only 3 million people, the
revolutionary bureaucracy conscripted 193,000 men. Fifty-one
thousand Belgians died on the battlefields. I have read
thousands of letters from Belgian soldiers at the Liège
archives, but I couldn't find one showing any liking for
such service. France's wars were not theirs and most were at
a loss to know what they were fighting for, so far away from
home. As many Belgians died in those wars as during four
years of combat in World War I.

***

Napoleon's bureaucracy even interfered with the church in
Belgium. The archbishop was part of government intelligence
and all his bishops were French nationals. Native clergymen
who objected were sent into exile or even to forced labor.

The oppression by French bureaucracy must, however, not
obscure Napoleon's grandiose attempt to unify Europe while
there was still time. A true genius is generally recognized
only a generation later.Napoleon's enemies would not let him accomplish this
mission. Had he succeeded, Europe would be the world's
greatest power.

***

What was, however, contemptible in 1919 was the attempt of
petty backwater politicians to cloak themselves with the
imperial mantle to sell their mediocre politics.Saarland had never been French, despite being occupied from
1792 to 1814 by the revolutionary French regime. It
certainly would be even less likely to become so after four
years of war against France. It was most misleading to tell
Wilson how much the people of Saarland wanted to be annexed
by France. Wilson was quite confused on the issue, and his
lack of historical knowledge did not help to clarify his
mind.Tardieu aided and abetted Wilson's confusion with incessant
demands that Saarland be returned to the fatherland: "It was
hard work [to convince Wilson] since France had not
officially claimed Saarland during the war." (Tardieu,
Peace, p. 278)So it was now that Saarland, occupied by France for fewer
than 20 of the 2,000 years of its history, had become, in
Tardieu's memorandum, "French land of long standing, torn
away from France without consultation with its inhabitants."The will of the people of Saarland would manifest itself in
1935, after 17 years of occupation, when over 90% of them
voted not to be "reunited" with France.

***

The other Allies could hardly believe their ears. They knew
that Clemenceau and Tardieu had something else in mind
besides embracing long-lost brothers.Financial interests behind the French government had their
eyes on the modern coal mines, which extracted 17 million
tons of coal per year, with reserves estimated at 17 billion
tons. Tardieu specified his claim on the Saarland industrial
complex:"The working mines, the unmined coal, all the attendant
industries such as steelworks, foundries, factories etc."As for the privately owned mines: "They would be bought by
the German government, which would pay the mines' owners,
and then would be handed over to the French government."Wilson found these claims exorbitant: "I am ready to
recognize that France should have the use of the mines for a
limited time." He was totally opposed to their transfer to the French government."He agreed," lamented Tardieu, "that we could take enough
coal to compensate us our loss of production during the war,
but he refused us ownership of the mines."On March 28, 1919 the difference of opinion became nasty.
Wilson: "So if you do not obtain what you want you will
refuse to act in concert with us. Do you want to see me go
back to America?"Clemenceau: "No, I'm the one who is going to leave."He thereupon made a theatrical exit from the conference.

***

Wilson's position was very complex. His health was failing;
the Senate was awaiting his return to attack him. Was he to
forfeit his policy over a matter of German mines? After
three days of migraine and painful deliberation Wilson once
again relented. On March 31 he let Clemenceau have the
Saarland mines and industries.No sooner had this enormous concession been extracted from
Wilson than Clemenceau began to demand the whole Saarland.Tardieu came out with the same old refrain: "This soil had
been incorporated into France, one and indivisible, given
freely and with their consent."Wilson threw up his arms: "We are creating a new
Alsace-Lorraine situation! France has never mentioned in any
public document its intention of going back to the 1814
border. The basis for peace, accepted by the French
government, referred to reparation of wrongs inflicted in
1871 and not in 1815. This basis is what links the Allies."Wilson concluded: "The border of 1814 did not correspond to
any economic reality. To give away such a territory without
an immediate plebiscite would be inadmissible." (Tardieu,
Peace, p. 291)Once more acrimonious deliberations followed. On April 6 the
American press reported: "Clemenceau demands more
annexations."On the 7th Wilson ordered the George Washington at Brest be
readied to take him home.

***

Clemenceau and Tardieu were concerned about Wilson's
intended sudden departure. Wrote Tardieu: "We are
considering the gravity of a negative decision. Yet we have
decided not to yield." (Tardieu, Peace, P 300)In theory, however, they would give the appearance of
yielding. Exploiting Wilson's pet policy of
self-determination. Clemenceau promised to hold a plebiscite in Saarland-in 15 years' time.
Nevertheless, Wilson accepted the formula. Tardieu and Clemenceau were
elated and sent this flattering note to Wilson: "The French government is
ready to complete the proposals as suggested by President
Wilson."Thus 660,000 Germans would be placed under foreign rule for
15 years, without being asked their opinion.Tardieu knew that a plebiscite after the war would have been
overwhelmingly defeated. He estimated fifteen years were
necessary to transform the ethnic and social structure of
Saarland. There was in fact no concession to Wilson, but a
maneuver to gain time.Tardieu admitted: "Under the burden of a century of Prussian
oppression an immediate plebiscite would have been
perverted. The French of Saarland would have been sacrificed
forever."Tardieu counted 150,000 French people in Saarland, a totally
inflated figure cooked up for Wilson's benefit. But by 1935
many Germans would have been expelled, many French
bureaucrats would have been imported, electoral laws would
have been amended. Saarland would now come under the control
of a government commission controlled by French politicians.
An international occupation force composed of Italian,
British and French soldiers would keep "order." During these
15 years no German politician or minister, even the
chancellor, would be allowed to set foot in Saarland.The French journalist Hervé wrote on May 31, 1919:We are taking over the Saarland mines and in order not to be
hindered in our exploitation, we are forming a small
distinct state for the 600,000 Germans living in the mining
area. At the end of 15 years we will try with a plebiscite
to bring them to declare themselves French. We know what
that means: for 15 years we are going to manipulate them and
harass them, until we obtain from them this declaration. We
know very well it is just an attempt to annex 600,000
Germans.

***

Lloyd George told Wilson: "Mr. President, I believe this is
an excellent plan." Wilson somewhat sardonically replied: "Why don't you
apply it to Ireland?"The plan included an administrative commission presided over
by a French bureaucrat and composed of a Belgian, a Dane, a
Canadian and only one German. Germany was forbidden to take
part in the political life of Saarland. Saarlanders would be
prohibited from serving in the German congress and the commission had the right to expel any
public servant it felt undesirable.

On April 9, Tardieu asked Wilson, in almost an ultimatum:1) Will German sovereignty be suspended?2) Will the commission have full powers?3) Will the election [of Saarlanders] to the Reichstag be
abolished?(Tardieu, Peace, p. 304)

Wilson agreed on all points.The next day Tardieu stated, "Our committee had drafted the
46 articles of Section IV of the Versailles Treaty concerning Saarland."The Committee of Four would accept them on April 10.
Saarland was now to pass under the control of a foreign
country without the consent of its population.Within months 700 German nationalist leaders in Saarland
would be put in jail. Some were sent to hard labor and one was executed.

***

A few months later Tardieu would summarize the takeover: "On
the 10th of January, 1920, our engineers took control of the
mines. A few days later the Administrative Commission would
be officially installed in Saarbrücken."Fifteen years later, when the people of Saarland were able
to vote, over 9007o chose reunification with Germany, despite the fact
that Germany had been forbidden to campaign. As for
Tardieu's 150,000 Frenchmen, on the date of the election,
January 13, 1935, they were nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER LVII

France in the Rhineland

6 is not the fault of the Revolution's armies if we are no
longer in the Rhineland," Clemenceau had shouted on the Senate floor.
After Alsace-Lorraine and Saarland, the Rhineland
represented the third demand Clemenceau was determined to
push through the Paris Conference.The armistice had hardly been signed when Marshal Foch had
made claims undermining the very basis of the Armistice
agreement: "No conquest or annexations" and "the right of
self-determination for all people."On November 29, 1918 Clemenceau had praised Wilson's
Fourteen Points while at the same time doing everything in
his power to bypass them. In the name of liberty, equality,
and fraternity, Clemenceau would demand that tens of
millions of Germans living in the Rhineland be placed under
his control.Foch had submitted a proposal to Clemenceau whereby the
Rhineland population could be incorporated in a non-German
system.On January 10, 1919 he would officially declare:

1) Germany will have no military or political claim to the
Rhineland.2) The Allies will occupy the left bank of the Rhine.3) The Rhineland will be linked to the Allies by a common
customs treaty.[Subject] to these conditions and according to accepted
principles concerning people's freedom [sic], one can
conceive of the creation of autonomous states on the Rhine's
left bank.

Foch was only reflecting the intentions of the power behind
the French government. While ordinary French people were
whipped up in a frenzy of patriotism and vengeful
retribution against Germany, high finance was Preparing to
clean up.Tardieu even appealed to age-old Gallic sentiment in
claiming that the inhabitants of the Rhineland were
long-lost Celtic cousins who were longing to free themselves
from the Prussian yoke. The French leaders were now going
back 2,000 years in time.In a similar warp of logic Minister Briand had as early as
January 12, 1917 rationalized to Ambassador Jules Cambon
about "retaking the Rhine Provinces which were stolen from
us a century ago."

In other words the German lands that had been seized by the
cut-throats of the French Revolution by force and violence
had now become "lost provinces." Briand, Clemenceau and all
their colleagues were left-wing liberals who considered the
exploitation of Germany perfectly normal. The heirs of the
French Revolution were claiming their heritage: "We claim
the left bank of the Rhine as our lost heritage, which the
French Revolution bequeathed us," was the political cry.Although the French Revolution had chopped off the heads of
the king and queen of France, and the Bolsheviks had
patterned themselves on these cut-throats. Briand had
managed to convince Tsar Nicholas:"On February 14, 1917 Russian Minister Pokrovski had
acknowledged Briand's communication (concerning Clemenceau's
claims to the Rhineland, Alsace-Lorraine and Saarland). He
informed the French government that his majesty the tsar
totally supported its claims." (Renouvin, The Crisis in
Europe)This Franco-Russian agreement of January, 1917 was so
explicit that Briand read it secretly to the French in June,
1917. The secret agreement had been kept from the knowledge
of Clemenceau's allies, and Lenin thought he would oblige
the British by releasing the final agreement of February 14,
1917.In fact, both Lord Balfour and Wilson had known all along
but feigned ignorance and indignation. Lloyd George would
later use this knowledge to quell Clemenceau's ambitions.
The British were very apprehensive that France would get too
big for its boots, for they intended to keep both Germany
and France in a state of inferiority.Suddenly, Lloyd George had his man at the Paris Conference,
Philip Kerr, become the champion of self-determination: "Is
it possible to occupy a land of 7 million Germans? Is it
possible to separate from Germany all these Germans without
consulting them? It is possible to fail the very principles
for which the Allies have fought?"As for the "lost Rhineland," which Germany had in reality
lost from 1793 to 1815, Kerr reminded the conference:

This historical argument has been abused. In all its
official or parliamentary declarations, on December 30,
1916, January 10 and June 5 and 6, French government had never pressed such claims.Great Britain disagrees with military occupation and the use
of its troops outside British territory. Furthermore, such
an occupation could create nationalist reaction not only on
the left bank but throughout Germany. It could create
unfavorable propaganda in the Anglo-Saxon countries. The
Allies' image could be tarnished, particularly that of
France. Since Germany has been disarmed, is the occupation
really necessary?

CHAPTER LVIII

The Rhineland Occupation

To Kerr's objections Tardieu answered: "There are
revolutionary sentiments in the Rhineland. We will train
them. They have learned a lot during the war-principally
that France is the bastion of democracy."The idea of such a bastion of democracy swallowing up
western Germany without the consent of its people was not
without irony.Tardieu also tried to put to rest the fears that the
occupation of Germany could lead to a revolt: "To this we
answer that the Rhinelanders are only concerned with their fear of taxes and Bolshevism."
(Tardieu, Peace, p. 193)There again Tardieu did not fear irony: his government was
just concluding a treaty with the Bolshevik dictatorship of
Munich. As for the Rhinelanders' fear of taxes, Tardieu
would exploit it by promising them exemption from war
reparations if they went along with his policy. He enumerated further advantages: "No draft registration,
shipments of food, a customs union and banking reforms."Despite these tempting offers in a time of famine and
misery, the Rhinelanders did not show any inclination to
rush to France.

***

Tardieu did not convince the conference and ended his case
unequivocally: "To ask us to renounce occupying [Germany] is
as if we would ask England and the United States to sink all their
war vessels. We refuse." (Tardieu, Peace, p. 193)Britain certainly could play the role of protector of
peoples' rights to self- determination. The British had
already helped themselves to 80% of the German fleet, and
more than 1'/ million square miles of former German colonial territories. It was the height of British hypocrisy
to object sanctimoniously to France's attempts to do
likewise.Tardieu felt his claims were modest, compared to what the
British had taken without the slightest discussion or
debate. He presented his plan:

1) The Rhine will mark German's western border. Germany will
renounce sovereignty over all territories west of the Rhine.
2) An Allied occupation force would control Kehl, Mannheim,
Mainz, Coblenz, Cologne, and Düsseldorf as part of the
definitive peace treaty.3) The territories on the left bank of the Rhine, with the
exception of Alsace-Lorraine, will be transformed into one
or several independent states. (Tardieu, Peace, p. 141)

***

Wilson had just returned to the conference table after a
quick visit to the United States. He immediately let his
concern be known: "How can we forget that when we signed an
armistice with Germany we took on certain definite
commitments. If we accept the Clemenceau-Tardieu plan we
will trample these commitments into the ground and will be
in open conflict with the Fourteen Points."Since Tardieu claimed his plan was only conceived to ensure
French national security Wilson thought if the United States
would gurarantee full protection to France perhaps
Clemenceau and his backers would drop their expansionist
plan. Wilson and Lloyd George proposed that:

The left bank of the Rhine will remain German and will not
be occupied by an Allied force or a French one. Great
Britain and the United States will give France the solemn
undertaking to provide immediate military help in case of
peril. (Tardieu, Peace, p. 196)

Clemenceau decided to finesse himself out of this
embarrassing offer. He would pretend to go along with
apparent satisfaction: "We greet with the most sincere
appreciation the undertaking you have offered us and we wish
to accept it."Wilson was all smiles until Clemenceau added: "But our
acceptance will be on the condition that most of the
guarantees we have asked be met and, to start, the
occupation [of western Germany].

***

Just as in the case of the Saarland, where elections would
be postponed for 15 years, Clemenceau would occupy the
Rhineland unofficially. It was legalistic legerdemain, which
left Lloyd George and Wilson somewhat off balance.Tardieu pressed them to ratify their guarantees, knowing the
American Senate would never go along with Wilson's
magnanimous offer. He was right. Lloyd George used the
Senate's refusal to take French leave (or, as Tardieu would
say, an English leave-filer a anglaise).Clemenceau was therefore free to occupy the Rhineland by
default. He appeased Wilson's conscience by placing a time
limit of 15 years on the occupation, but there again not
without strings: "The occupation will last 15 years but with
the option of extending it if Germany reneges on its
commitments or if the British and Americans fail to meet
their guarantees. (Tardieu, Peace, p. 221)

Tardieu insisted this demand be included in the Treaty of
Versailles. Thus the least German infraction would give
Clemenceau the excuse to send his forces farther east. This
would happen the very next year, and again in 1923, in the
Ruhr basin.The British Establishment felt it had been given a dose of
its own medicine and looked for a way to defuse a situation
it could not control."As early as May, 1919," wrote Tardieu, "Lloyd George
regretted acceding to our demands, which he thought would
start another war."The British asked the French government to reduce their
occupation time from 15 years to 18 months. Lloyd George
admitted: "We should never have accepted this long
occupation. The whole project should be studied again. I
accepted it, it's true; but since then I have convened the
Imperial Cabinet four times and all the members agree I was
wrong."By now Lloyd George thought the occupation would be "useless
because Germany had only 100,000 soldiers and Great Britain
and the United States would stand by France in case of
aggression. The occupation is illogical because it will be
50 or 60 years before Germany is dangerous again." (Tardieu,
Peace, p. 217)

***

Clemenceau would soon find himself overtaken by even more
demanding elements within his own government, who wished
nothing less than the creation of a Rhineland republic,
regardless of the consequences.

CHAPTER LIX

The Rhineland Republic

Are the Rhinelanders Celtic like us?" asked Clemenceau.
"I am not so sure; but there is no harm in saying it. But don't ask me
what are the definitive characteristics of a Celt."He was ignorant of ethnology and of many other branches of
knowledge. He was also a fanatically anti-clerical
Freemason, who hated the Rhineland for its strong Catholic
tradition. He had extracted the maximum concessions from
Lloyd George and Wilson through dogged perseverance. He was
going to impose his anti-clericalism on the Rhineland
regardless of the consequences, but now he knew he had
reached the limit. To demand more would have been the last
straw. He thought there were more subtle and diplomatic ways
to control the Rhineland than to create an independent
state. He knew as well that the Rhinelanders were not
longing to be under the control of his government.

***

Meanwhile Clemenceau had fallen out with Poincaré, the
titular head of the French republic, as well as Marshal
Foch, the head of the French army. Both believed Clemenceau
either too close to the British point of view or simply too
soft on the Rhineland issue. Poincaré and Foch had been
brought up on the myth of the lost Rhineland provinces.
During the Versailles Conference they openly sniped at
Clemenceau's policy and decisions.There were also the activities of General Mangin, commanding
officer of the French troops stationed in the Rhineland. He
conducted his own policy for the creation of an independent
state, sponsoring meetings of prominent Rhinelanders in
Landau and Cologne.

***

In April, 1919 Mangin had convinced a former Rhineland
magistrate named Dorten to accept financial help in exchange
for Rhenish separatism. Later on May 17 Mangin met with two
Rhineland deputies, Kastert and Kuckhoff, and asked them to join his separatist efforts. The
pair immediately rushed to Berlin to report the meeting to
Chancellor Scheidemann, who was outraged as such "blatant
interference in the political affairs of Germany."This intervention would assume serious proportions. Wilson
had also been informed of separatist machinations not only
in the territory occupied by Mangin but also in the American
zone. He sent Clemenceau the official report from the
American general in charge:This morning General Mangin, commander of the French army in
Mainz, sent one of his staff colonels to the headquarters of
General Ligget, Coblenz, to ask what would be our attitude
concerning a political revolution on the left bank of the
Rhine for the purpose of establishing a free Rhineland
republic, independent from Germany. He assured us he had
some 50 delegates ready to move into the American sector to
start the revolution. Although he did not specify who the
delegates were, it appeared they were French.Wilson added to the report: "General Ligget has refused, and
rightly so, to take this proposition into consideration. I
totally endorse his decision. He had been given instructions
to prevent political agitators from entering our sector,
regardless of who gave the orders." (Clemenceau, p. 181)Clemenceau was stunned. These separatist maneuvers had been
conducted behind his back. He immediately dispatched his own
investigators to the Rhineland. They quickly confirmed that
the incredible had happened. Mangin had even informed Ligget
he had "no right to prevent the people of the Rhineland from
exercising their will." Similar notices were conveyed to
General Michel of Belgium and General Robertson of Great
Britain.Lloyd George confronted Clemenceau in the middle of the
peace conference: "Right now your generals are working at
creating a Rhineland republic."While Clemenceau awaited the full results of his
investigations he learned that Mangin's man, former
Magistrate Dorten, had on June 1, 1919 proclaimed the
Rhineland a republic and formed a government with himself as
president. Dorten was backed by not only Mangin and Foch but
by President Poincaré himself: "The president, " wrote
Clemenceau, "was a discreet but resolute partisan of French
annexation of the Rhineland, even if it was called something
else."Mangin immediately asked Poincaré to receive Dorten in Paris
so that he could "express the